Category Archives: Pointless Nostalgia

Basketball, Pointless Nostalgia

Olympics of the Mind Meets Freedom of Drunken Speech

When I was in fourth grade, I was in something called Olympics of the Mind, a competition for future nerds and theatre people. This organization still exists, but at some point, it was forced to change the first word in its name to “Odyssey”, because the International Olympic Committee, in the spirit of brotherhood and good sportsmanship, sued them.

Each year, OM has a bunch of different “problems” you can choose from. They require you to develop a skit around a certain theme, usually historical (certain “problems” also involved some kind of engineering, like building a structure that could withstand a certain amount of weight). There’s also a segment called “spontaneous”, which is basically a word association game. Teams receive points for the skit, spontaneous, and “style” (a concept I have no better grasp of now than I did then).

I’m still not sure why my school participated in these shenanigans. As an adult, it strikes me as the kind of wonderful thing they do at super artsy private schools where kids discover their desks and learn ancient Greek in the third grade. I did not go to such a place of learning. Mine was a thoroughly middle of the road public school. But I was in a gifted students program that met twice a week outside my regular class, and the school thought enough of us to draft us for an OM team (though they didn’t think enough of us to allow us to meet anywhere but a large closet used to store old textbooks).

The first year I did it, the problem involved prehistoric man. I named our skit “Cro-Magnon P.I.” (still my proudest creative contribution to the world). We painted a drop cloth set and put together a few props and rehearsed for months, but even though I was a ridiculously optimistic/delusional kid (I was convinced that somehow I’d be world famous by age 12), I hadn’t the slightest expectation of winning anything. It never even crossed my mind.

So said mind was blown when my team actually won our “problem”, and we all ran up on the stage in the auditorium of the local BOCES and jumped up and down like kids who have just won something surrounded by other kids who didn’t. It meant we were going to the state OM championships in Syracuse!

It also meant I’d be going far away from home, on a bus, and staying over a few nights in a hotel, something I’d never done before in my life. My family had zero money, so we never went on vacation. I’d been to The City many times to visit family, but I’d never been outside of a 50 mile radius of my home. So Syracuse might as well have been Disneyland to me. After all, it was a college town. It was full of smart people, just like me!

The bus ride up was a combination of abject terror and delicious anarchy. My district crammed all of the kids who’d won their OM competitions into one rickety school bus. So that included kids as young as me (and younger), all the way up to high school seniors. I vividly remember one Big Kid blasting “Brass Monkey” over and over from a large, chunky, silver boom box. I remember kids shuttling from one end of the bus to the other as it scooted up the Thruway (this was in the pre-seatbelt school bus era).

BobKnight.jpgI don’t remember seeing a single parent or teacher intercede to prevent any of the madness (though I’m sure adults were present). I was simultaneously terrified and giddy. I was seriously worried that something terrible would result from all this freedom, but I was also swept up in the insanity. I was on a flaming Viking ship headed straight for a rocky shore, so I might as well have enjoyed it.

At this point, it’s necessary to mention that we were heading to Syracuse a few short days after the Orangemen fell to Indiana in a hotly contested NCAA basketball final. So as we sped toward the town in our Crazy Yellow Fun-Bus, Syracuse was still a smoking ruin of rage and resentment. Got the scene?

Someone in charge thought it would be a neat idea to give us a sneak peek at the illustrious Syracuse campus. In order to do so, we first had to drive through that troublesome neighborhood that surrounds every campus: The Shithole of Off-Campus Housing. Places where sofas are used as lawn furniture and the residents do their damnedest to grow trees made of empty beer cans and Solo cups.

And as we drove through this frat boy Beirut, we spotted one house that looked slightly better than the rest. But this was only because most of its exterior was covered by a large sheet. One of the house’s occupants had hung an enormous bedsheet from a second story window. And on this sheet, they had written, in black shoe polish in 10-foot high letters:

FUCK BOBBY KNIGHT!

Word spread through the bus by wildfire, and pretty soon the entire kid population of the bus ran to one side to witness this majestic obscenity. I’m surprised the whole thing didn’t tip over. A huge cheer rang through the bus, with much hooting and hollering. It was easily the greatest thing any kid on the bus had ever seen. I BARELY KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS BUT I KNOW IT’S AWESOME AND I’VE NEVER EVEN SEEN IT WRITTEN DOWN BEFORE IN MY LIFE LET ALONE IN LETTERS THAT HUGE!

As for the OM state championships, I stayed at a Holiday Inn and thought it was the greatest thing ever because I swam in a pool and stayed up late watching cable TV (another luxury I was not used to). We did our skit again and I was convinced we were the best and were destined for stardom.

We finished next to last. The trip back home was not as much fun. However, I did take away something from my trip. I’m not all that into college sports in any form. I did not attend a “sports’ college. But whenever I find myself forced to choose sides in a collegiate game, I say I’m a fan of Syracuse, and that banner is why.

Pointless Nostalgia

Of Shopping Carts, and the Best Thing I’ve Ever Seen

shoppingcartsmash.jpgThis last Saturday, The Wife and I volunteered at WFMU for their annual pledge marathon. (You may have seen me write about it a few thousand times.) I did some phone answering and assisted her as she cooked dinner for the DJs and volunteers. It was great and fun and rewarding and I got to hang out with lots of amazing people. But earlier in the day, I saw something that made the day even more special.

We needed a few more items for dinner prep, so we drove to a nearby Shop Rite. If you live in the NYC area, you may remember that on Saturday, we were basically hit by a hurricane. I could literally feel my tiny little car getting pushed by the wind as we chugged along to the store. About a block away from the Shop Rite’s entrance, as we waited at a red light, I saw a rogue shopping cart bolt from the confines of the parking lot and make a run at freedom, straight across an extremely busy, four-lane street.

Unfortunately, this shopping cart jailbreak coincided with the light turning green. As the traffic began to move again, most of the cars managed to avoid it with some judicious swerving and braking, except for one completely oblivious Mercedes SUV. There’s no way the driver of this car could have missed the thing, unless they were facing backwards with their eyes closed. Still, they drove on, making no attempt at evasive action, and so hit the shopping cart head on with a big, rattly WHAM.

Not only was this awesome and hilarious, but it also brought back a fantastic memory. This blast from the past also involved cars, and shopping carts, and the best thing I’ve ever seen.

I was about 11 or 12 years old. My mom had to make a quick run to the Grand Union in town. So my two younger brothers, my cousin, and I piled into her car and went along for the trip, probably so we could finagle a trip to the local video store and rent a Nintendo game right after the groceries were done. I only note the headcount to prove this story can be verified by other sources. What I’m about to tell you actually happened.

As my mom went inside the Grand Union, we stayed in the car and probably listened to a Weird Al tape or something. But we were about to witness something far more mind-blowing than “Like a Surgeon” (no offense, Al). My mom’s car was parked at the edge of the parking lot, facing a small hill that led down to a creek. There was no guardrail or fence or anything else to separate this hill from the parking lot.

Suddenly, we heard an engine racing off in the distance. An angry, growling engine. As the sound got closer, we saw it was attached to an avocado green American car of 70s vintage. Something low and sloped, almost El Camino like. And it was going very fast down the main drag of our small town, in an area where 30 mph speed limits were generally adhered to.

As he neared the Grand Union, he suddenly swerved toward the parking lot without slowing down much, if at all. He peeled into the lot with a horrifying screech, burning rubber and making a dangerously wide arc on his way in. Once he regained control of his vehicle, he aimed it at a parking spot a few slots to our left. The fact that this parking spot had two idle shopping carts in it did not concern him. Or, more likely, he had no time to worry about it, as he spent most of his concentration on driving like a maniac.

The two shopping carts each took a different approach to this assault. One of them was defiant and flipped up in the air, landing upside down on his hood. The other one was more submissive. It launched off of the car’s grill, as if it had been drop kicked, and tumbled down the hill into the creek below.

Somehow, the driver managed to stop his car before it too careened down the ravine. With rubber mist hanging in the air and a shopping cart still clinging to the hood of his car, the driver got out. And this is the craziest part of the story: he walked over to the Grand Union as calmly as I’ve ever seen anyone do anything. Whatever sense of urgency compelled him to drive like a maniac and defy common sense, the self preservation instinct, and the well-being of his vehicle had completely vanished.

It was like something out of the best action movie ever made, but not even the craziest, Jason Statham-iest thriller would have a scene like this in it, because it would stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief far beyond their limits.

The only bad thing about witnessing this? Even at age 11-or-12, I knew I would NEVER see anything better.

Pointless Nostalgia

Curious Business Models Theatre Presents…Consumers

Yesterday, The Wife and I were debating where to seek out a certain piece of electronic equipment for the house (if you must know, we want to get one of those jacuzzi tanning beds–we work hard, we deserve it!). I jokingly said she should look for it at Consumers, which I thought would be a sure-fire laugh getter, but I was only greeted with silence. It dawned on me that there must be some people out there unfamiliar with the infuriating world of Consumers.

In case you are one of those blighted few, I’ll fill you in. Consumers was a big, boxy store that inexplicably sprang up all over the northeast corridor in the 1980s, despite having one of the counterintuitive business models ever.

The idea behind Consumers: the store could save overhead by not having a big showroom for all its wares, and pass those savings along to you. The stores were extremely minimalist, with only a few items on display, and sometimes a jewelry counter.

But if they had no showroom, how did you get your stuff? I’m glad you asked! Consumers had huge catalogs full of all the items they sold. It was sort of a Sears Wish Book, except it contained more than kids stuff. VCRs, jewelry, lawnmowers, you name it.

The catalog was enormous, and enticing. I remember being very impressed by them as a kid, especially the toy/video game section. They even had a teaser for Super Mario Brother 2 several months before it was released. Of course, it was just a screenshot of Super Mario Brothers 1 blown up really big, a ruse even eight-year-old me was able to suss out. But I appreciated the effort they went through to trick me.

If you wanted something at Consumers, you filled out a slip with the item’s info, then got on a Space Mountain-sized line that snaked through rows of metal corrals. Eventually, you came face to face with an actual clerk manning one of the many counter stations that lined the length of the store. You handed your slip to a clerk and waited for them to retrieve your item from the warehouse. And waited. And waited. And waited. And also waited.

And after all of this waiting, there was no guarantee the store would actually have the item in question. Consumers lacked either the ability or the willingness to implement a computerized database to track such things (even though this technology existed by the mid-80s), so the only way to determine if the store had something in stock was to actually go in the back and check.

Disappointment can happen to you at any store, of course. You go to the mall, hoping to find a certain thing, and it turns out no one has it. But there is something especially exasperating about jumping through all these bureaucratic steps, and waiting on line, and waiting for a clerk to emerge from the back, and then finding out you’re screwed. Kafka himself could not have designed a more Kafka-esque shopping experience.

This was torturous when I was a kid. We didn’t get toys too often, but when we did, it was often at Consumers, because it was cheap and we didn’t have a Toys R Us nearby. Children have no patience to begin with, but asking them to endure this rigamarole is impossible. I would hear other kids cry and scream and throw fits as they found out the toys they wanted were out of stock, and just pray they didn’t want the same thing I wanted.

This shows just how far things have advanced in the last 25 years. The modern shopping experience is all pitched toward empowering the consumer, giving them as many choices as possible and extensive previews of the product they’re considering buying. Can you imagine a store that not only required such waiting, but didn’t guarantee they’d have what you wanted? There’d be riots in the streets.

What’s even more amazing is that Consumers was simply the most austere of the catalog stores of the 80s. There were a few others, like Service Merchandise, but these other stores also had a lot of goods on display. You could actually buy things off the rack at Service Merchandise. You could not do that at Consumers.

In a weird way, Consumers was a predecessor of sites like Amazon, which also have no physical displays, which cuts down on costs. And you can think of a catalog as a low-tech site showcasing a store’s wares. The big difference, of course, is that you don’t have to leave your house to window-shop at Amazon. And if what they have is out of stock, you go to another site, or shrug your shoulders, rather than leave a store completely defeated and hating life.