Aug 12 2008
Cut and Paste…Are you sitting down?
At the Drive In’s “In Casino Out” was released sometime before the summer of 1998. I guess I bought it around that time and decided after listening to it maybe once that it was not for me. I made the mistake of giving it to Mike Tracey. Something he reminds me of everytime I talk about how it is one of my favorite records ever.
I bought the album a second time a few years later only to have it stolen when my car was broken into by the Stadium in the summer of 2002.
Last week I bought the album for a third time on iTunes and it is still a great album. I wish the 1998 version of myself had better patience but it is a little late for all that.
My senior of high school I took crafts and ceramics. They were two different classes not one class. One was crafts and one was ceramics. Some mornings I would have crafts followed by ceramics; which meant I had like three hours of bullshit right off the bat. We made Chrsitmas ornaments in ceramics and doilees in crafts. No big deal; I wasn’t parading around the school showing off.
But there was a group of students that did just that: the stained glass class. These fucking people thought they were the mutt’s nuts. They had a special classroom on the nice floor that always seemed to be dark and I don’t really know why. They would always talk about how they were working on a special project or some shit.
“I gotta go back to stained glass, bro. Working on a Yankees championship piece. It is gonna be sick.”
“Oh yeah, well I made a little stuffed bear with a top hat in crafts. So, I got a pretty full plate here too man!”
Guys are walking around with hot iron tools, bending metal and melting glass. I’m in the Goddamn crafts room in the frigging basement looking through the yarn bin trying to find a fushcia for my bear’s hat to match the saddlebrown I chose for his tummy! I was in honor’s English and History! They couldn’t get me in the stained glass class? Pull a few strings for me here, Asst. Principal Gebbia!!!
One of my best friends in the world was in the stained glass class, Pete Baker. You would have thought he was working on the fucking Mars Rover in there, using technical terms and what not. It was unreal how they acted about that class. I just wish there was someway they could have all burned themselves a little bit with a hot glue gun or something, ya know? Nothing bad, I don’t want people with melty faces or anything like that. Just a little singe to say, ‘Hey, it’s not all roses in here pal. You gotta work a little bit, okay?”
Truth is, I wanted to make a sick Yankee championship piece, you know? It wasn’t in the cards and I couldn’t really complain all that much about the classes I had but they used to make me so mad! I hope they still cherish their gay little designs today because I know my teddy bear is around somewhere.
