-Fool! You have awakened Tripod the Devourer. Prepare to feel the wrath of the Elder Dog.-Here is about the most half-assed adventure of them all. Probably not. There are a few more I could throw about that might not even qualify. Visiting the grand parents and going to an antiques fair, the excitement never ends. Stick around, you're in for some high adventure the likes of which Conan the Barbarian and Amelia Erhart combined have never seen. Sshoot, iffin you're truely lucky you might even get to come along on a trip to the supermarket. If you believe that, then I have a nice piece of real estate to sell you. You might know it, it's called Washington DC. I'll let it go real cheap.
It's roadkill season in Michigan, where the less than thrilling creatures throw themselves under the tires of passing motorists. Deer, raccoons and other creatures that are less than unidentifiable in their present state. Usually good decorum demands that nobody actually tries to figure out what the smears at one time were, at least in a vocal manner. The season itself never ends, but rather waxes and wanes. The major upswing comes about the middle of spring, where roadtrippers often get the wonderful and entertaining experience of playing round after round of “What's that smell?” It's a wonderful time to be alive.
Evil and I decided to spend the weekend visiting the grand parents in and about eastern Michigan. If the lower peninsula of the state is shaped like a mitten, and most agree that it is, then we were headed over towards the space between the forefinger and the thumb. The tri-cities area if you know where that is. We decided that on friday night we'd drive up, stick around until sunday and then head home. Talk, visit and all that sort of thing. Fan-bloody-tastic.-'Buy the carton' Is this a command or an offer? An attempt at advertising that is so blatant that it becomes subliminal once again? It's like living in John Carpenter's movie "They Live"-
It was my idea, I wanted to drop by. They like to see us and I get along well with the grandrents. I share my sense of humor with my grandfather and my grandmother is the nerdy matriarch of our family (She loves to watch X-men, Spiderman moves and has been reading LoTR since the 60s). They're a lot of fun to spend time with. And it all gets me out of GR. So all the better,
The grandrents were gifted a set of free passes for the local Antiques fair in Midland. The even runs three times over the summer and they gather vendors from all around to come in and try to sell a vast array of stuff. I'm gonna spoil the ending here, most of what is on the plate can't be considered to be 'Antiques' by any stretch of the imagination. I don't care how battered that first edition of The Mighty Ducks two with Emilio Estaves on VHS is, it ain't an antique.-A whole table full of Beanie Babies? I don't care what they cost! Get me my checkbook now!-
Here we come baby.
Like most such events, the hordes of attendees make up the better part of the attraction for me. Unlike most events I may attend, most of the people are middle-aged or later, the mean age being probably around 50 years old. As such, it holds a lot in common with Comic Cons, in that most of the con goers are rather unappealing, with the occasional pretty girl sprinkled into the mix to keep me interested. Oh, and by and large the antique's festival tends to be rather on the vanilla side of things. That's right, middle to old aged white folks. Hundreds of them. I'm sure that rule 34 applies somewhere here too. Damn I sound like a sex-crazed old prevert, exercising my preversions.
-Check out my friend Hu Nan Boo, a friend of all the children. That is correct, here stands a six foot tall chicken. Now that screams classy eating establishment. -We started on the road at around 6:30 friday evening. There are a couple of landmarks along the way I've wanted to get a picture of for years now. The first is the giant fiberglass chicken statue outside some small restaurant named Tony's. Supposedly they have a world famous giant steak sandwich. I've never been, since I've almost never been around when the place is open. Sad to say, as I would like to partake of yon sandwich one of these days. Giant and steak are a good combination of adjectives when applied to sandwich so far as I am concerned.
One day. One day.
The second landmark was Crapo road. I know. Childish as all hell. But it's Crapo road. Who was this Crapo whom got a road named after him(her?)? A wealthy farmer? A great warrior? My guess was that he was the least popular of the Marx brothers. The plumber. You probably never heard of him. Funny guy Crapo. He brought a lot of toilet humor into the act. But then the damn censors got a hold of him, and banned his special variety of humor as crass and offensive, and now here we are with a road named after a vanished star. I drink to you Crapo, and keep that whoopie cushion away from me.We hit the antiques fair early the next morning, around 10ish. Which isn't really that early in the morning. We drove over to the Midland county fairgrounds and attached airfield, bypassing the worst of the traffic. Might I add, free parking biznitches, yeah baby. You recall what I said about there being hundreds of white people going to these things? I have pictures of the line which stretches back about a quarter of a mile and is 3 to 5 people deep at any given time. That doesn't count the hundreds(thousands?) already inside partaking of the revelry and orgy of consumerism. Rule 34. Look it up at your own peril.
Five bucks a head means some pretty good business.-An antiques sale is like a giant garage sale, with a creepy carnival atmosphere. I'm pretty sure that garage sales are listed on the Stuff White People like website. if they aren't, they should be.-
We split with the grandrents and wandered off to browse. My interests are books, which there are often sellers, and anything that could be of any assistance in the inevitable zombie apocalypse. The second category is sadly lacking at the antiques fair. Maybe we should hit a gun show. More on that thought later.
Evil on the other hand was attracted to the bling. Every booth that had jewelery grabbed her attention. In the end, I got sick of waiting and wandered off. Not a good idea considering that I didn't have A) a cell phone B) control of the ride home. But hey, I'm a wild man like that, and I take my chances. Getting lost in the sea of aging vanilla and left for dead by the grandrents. It would have been a fate to sing about for ages to come.
-Tempting. So very tempting. But I would only use it in a manner strictly outlawed by the Geneva Convention. A crimes against humanity conviction is a difficult one to get over later in life. -
As I wandered through the lanes, I kept one eye open for anything of interest, while the other one was busy picking out interesting folks. Yeah, I can do that, both my eyes are lazy. What of it? The rules are different here than say at a comic or anime convention. I'm fairly certain that it goes against the social mores of the event to take pictures of random people. Mostly since they didn't come with the intention of looking like buffoons, even if that was how the fates have so conspired to make them appear.
-This, wait... Nah, they're empty.-My one regret in this is that I didn't get a shot of the dude with the Uber-mullet. Basically he had his hair high and tight for the front 80% of his head, in true mullet fashion. From the front he might have looked like a brand new recruit for the Marines. He even seemed to have had gel in his hair to make it spiky. Then there was the rear, where the mullet truly comes into it's own as a hairstyle. It ran down to the center of his back. That was merely the beginning. He had it tied in a pony tail, with addition four more rubberbands to... I don't know why they were there. Fashion perhaps? But then the be-mulleted generally live outside the realm of what is considered fashionable. They must have their own counterculture movement.
I saw another dude, Indian(of the American Aborigine variety) who had what appeared to be a mullet that he had braided. Didn't get a picture of that either, much to my current dismay. It did kick off a wonderful idea though: the great mullet hunt. Take the crew to an event that is in effect supermullety by its vary nature, and try to get pictures of the most exotic specimens. The Fat Man suggested a 4H county fair. I voted for a gun show. Another suggestion was a random racing event. The later would be out methinks. We want to hunt mullets, not drown in them.
So I kept an eye out of the be-mulleted among the community. Much to my disappointment, they seemed to have been lacking in number that day. There was an auto-show in the fairgrounds that very day, like a cancerous growth off of the antique fair. I spose I could have visited it, in search of dangerous game. With a flash of his mighty mullet, the predator moved into position to pounce upon his unsuspecting prey. Let's see what happens.
But no, I stayed away from the car show. Mostly out of a lack of interest on my part. Cars just aren't my thing. They're there, they're great tools. But that's about all. I'd rather dig through other people's rejected possessions in hope of finding a knife, or a sword or something. Anything to keep the hordes at bay for just a little longer.
No such luck Chuck.
I did happen across a stand that was selling flags. All kinds of them. I was sorely tempted to drop my eight bucks on a Fireworks flag, and hang it on our flagpole at the house. I resisted, since that would have required more effort than I was willing to put in. Not to mention the passel of neighborhood kids looking for cherry bombs and possible visits from our local police department trying to put an end to our criminal ways. All for naught.
With a heavy heart and an unchanged wallet, we left the fairgrounds for good and returned home for lunch. It was time to charge our batteries for the second half of the adventure. Our visit to Sam's Club. I tell you, life with the grandparents doesn't ever grow dull. No siree.
Actually the Grand parents seem to enjoy their little outings to Saginaw for the Sams Club visits. Riding with them is a blast, since both seem to need hearing aids, but neither like to wear them. This leads to some amusing conversations. Which lead to my statement that they're a lot like Laurel and Hardy. I was going to let them decide amongst themselves who was who in that arrangement.
-A giant inflatable waterslide jungle-gym deal? Why the hell didn't they have one of these when I was a 80 pound kid? Fuckers! -Sam's Club is Sam's Club. They're about the same everywhere. I should know, I've visited stores in several different states now. Huge steel boxes sitting on slabs of concrete. The insides are lined with shelving units twenty feet tall and packed with jumbo sized goods containing more of any given product than a normal human being can use in a year or more. When the zombie uprising comes, I'm staying away from that place – It'll probably attract wannabe survivors like NASCAR Races attract stupid. I'd also like to avoid the warehouse type stores in zones susceptible to earthquakes. Those are some skinny shelves when the earth starts moving.
I was impressed this time with their 'art collection' Even if I didn't think to get a pic at the time. Sorry, it blew my mind. In the middle of one of the aisles was a large cardboard display packed with all sorts of framed prints. I was mightily tempted purchase their copy of 'Dogs Playing Pool' But couldn't find my way to spending 20 on something so very tacky when only a couple hours earlier I turned my nose up at owning a copy of the movie Robo-Vampire for a mere three dollars. No, I didn't deserve this little bit of happiness. I'm a cheap bastard when it comes down to pointless purchases. Mamma would like to believe that she didn't raise no fool.
We made our rounds and then returned homeward. No high speed chases or drawn out gun battles. Just a whole lot of back road driving.
-Look at that scenery, breathtaking how it's all just pancake flat. Just a whole lot of flat. Hundreds of miles of it. Just keeps going and going and going and going and going.-
My folks come from this area. They were raised there. Eastern Michigan is a world of flat. The only feature that keeps it from being as desolate and depressing as one of the plains states are the trees that the farmers left up as windbreaks. The kid in me actually wants to get out and explore some of the copses that lie between the fields. I would love to get a close hand look at what sort of memory of wilderness that humanity has allowed to cling to the land.
But having seen this part of the state, especially during winter when the horizon stretches so much further without any relief, I can understand why my father was so desperate to move out and visit Alaska from so early in his youth, Anything to get away from that sort of featureless wasteland. Having lived in Alaska myself, I can't imagine ever wanting to live in Eastern Michigan. Maybe if I received a nasty head-wound. Something. Under any other circumstances I think that I'd find a way out, even if it meant leaving everything and just walking away.
And yet for some reason many of the relatives seem to be willing to stick around. Maybe they don't really know any better. Or perhaps the draw of family is just that strong. Personally I grew up 4000 miles away from the extended family, so their pull is nearly non-existent for me just on basis of being related to myself. I only really like to see the family members with whom I share common interests and thus a bond beyond sharing some random genetic material. That really isn't much of a basis for a relationship by itself. You need the shared experiences with those people, which I lack. So here I am rather ambivalent to the rest of the relatives on the whole, preferring to spend my time with just a handful.
-St Francis hanging with is boy Sidhartha. Word. -
So an adverb modifies a verb. Why isn't an adjective, which modifies a noun, called an adnoun? We had this discussion as we made dinner and came up with the only viable solution to the problem. Time travel. Some beatings and a petition to fix the English language. Fix some of the silliness that is inherent to our language right at the source.
Dinner happened, as it usually does, around an actual dining room table. Crazy I know. My folks long ago gave up on the tradition and instead we ate in the living room basking in the soft glow of our television. The TV was always on in those days. I don't miss it. But it's strange to eat at a table without your plate perched in your lap as the idiot box entertains you and face actual forced interaction with your family. I think this might be the way I would like to have things should I ever get married. It would fall in line with my negative views of Television's impact on our society. Too hell with religion, TV is today's opiate for the masses.
After dinner came more visiting of relatives. Thus comes the part I hate most about going to see the relatives. Going to see the relatives. A visit back to the homeland usually entails a lot of driving around to see people who are generally disinterested in my company. We share some genetics by chance and that's about all. They don't crave my company enough to stop by my corner of the world, though they do have lives – which I don't. Yet at the same time we're expected to go out of my way to see them when I'm in town. To pay homage to blood.
-Sixty mile an hour out the window of the car sunset shot. Turned out rather well.-
The excess travel really eliminates any possible relaxation factor that the weekend might have had and draws out the weekend. Though I admit that I am a fan of putting off returning to work. Not so much so that I would wish to spend eternity traveling the backroads of Bay County if it meant never having to go back to my job.
We only stuck around for about half of the next morning before up and returning back to the castle and the return of reality.
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