Tag: houses

the time I stayed with Cordell for the summer

I was eleven years old; almost twelve. It must’ve been June and July. I figure that because school was out and Weird Al Yankovic’s Deep End album was still new. I remember watching him perform songs from it on one of those late night talk shows. I was at Cordell’s house. Though he didn’t own it; his mother and father, my uncle, stayed there but were often gone; it was the house he lived in. I was just a visitor, staying with him for a few weeks because me and my mother, whom I lived with, weren’t getting along.

I barely knew his mother, but I liked her more than mine. They at least seemed to have a normal mother-son relationship. She yelled at him on occasion, but they seemed to get along. She was cool too, in the sense that she could relate to him; a boy the same age as me. I remember the topic of sex coming-up casually one day. He said something in regard to the smell of pussy, using an implication or euphemism as to not get too explicit in front of his mother. She asked him what it smelled like. He said fish. She laughed.

She laughed even harder the time I wrote “niger”. We were at one of her friend’s place one night, playing a board game; just the four of us, I’m almost sure. It was a type of guessing game in that one player had to guess what another player wrote down based on certain clues or something similar to that. I was told that what I had to guess was the color black, so I guessed “niger”. I don’t know if that’s how I spelled it, but I know it was spelled wrong as both his mother and her friend burst-out laughing.

There was also the time we were at another person’s house and a man head-butted a light pole outside to show a skeptical Cordell that he could make it move, but, aside from going to The Boys And Girls Club; his mother would drop us off there regularly until we got tired of it and told her we didn’t want to go anymore; it was mostly just me and Cordell at the house. He was funny. His unique sense of humor made an interesting contrast to my general solemness, but he wasn’t always fun to be around.

There was often unease, at least for me, as we traded insults; not only about each other but, one day, each other’s mother; and sometimes argued. It was never vicious; him yelling at me for not rinsing my dishes, which led ants to invade the sink, is the only time I remember him being mad for real; rather like rough play. One day we had a wrestling match outside on the grass. My uncle used to say he was going to buy boxing gloves so we could duke it out for real. He said he’d bet on me because I had less mouth.

Most of my verbal attacks came out of defense. It seems he always started it and I always threw it back at him. I had to stay on my toes. Not that we didn’t bond. We shared many laughs and had lots of friendly conversations. He liked my raps; I remember him telling his friends about me; and music sense. I had a lot more cassettes than him and knew more about music than him, which, even though he didn’t share my diversity when it came to genres; he mostly listened to rap; he seemed to respect.

Delmere lived across the street. I knew her from elementary school. Ebony went there too. She also lived on his street. I remember him calling her “Ebonyzer” from the porch, but that was nothing compared to how he made fun of me for leaping the gate when he sicced his dog on me. We were in the backyard, with Tobe, when Cordell unlocked the dog. I turned around, ran and cleared the gate like an Olympic sprinter, which he found hilarious. He did a similar thing to Gregory, a boy who lived down the street.

Cordell knew a lot of people in his neighborhood. He was a normal kid in that sense. I usually preferred to stay at home than hang with the kids in my neighborhood. Another major difference between us is that he cussed a lot when his parents weren’t around and I didn’t. It just wasn’t how I talked. I would’ve been fairly quiet there if it wasn’t for him. He liked to talk, joke and laugh, and I had to keep responding. It wasn’t nearly as annoying as it should’ve been though. I don’t remember ever getting homesick.

I don’t even remember going home. Memories are fragmented and out of order. I just know I stayed there; he had twin beds in his room; for weeks. A little stank-breathed boy his mother was babysitting stayed with us one night. One day Cordell and I cleaned Carrie’s nasty house and she only paid us like 15 dollars to split. I remember us complaining to his mother about it in the basement. I remember my uncle playing music and cutting my hair in the basement. Cordell insisted on the barber shop instead.

I remember my uncle falling asleep in the basement when he was supposed to take us somewhere. We used to watch movies; Night Of The Living Dead, Johnny Handsome, Die Hard; there too. He lived there while Cordell’s mother slept on the second floor across from our room; the result of a romantic relationship gone awry, which I never pondered at the time. Thoughts like that didn’t really cross my mind back then. I was just getting into sex when Cordell teasingly asked me how many “holes” girls have.

I doubt he was getting any either. He talked with girls on the phone; one even prank-called my uncle; but they never came over. He talked with Keith sometimes. He’d tease him about the mole on his face. Cordell loved ridiculing people for the sake of a laugh. When I told him about Chris getting “jumped” and hiding by a trash dump, it was comedy gold. He once told me a joke about a man who took a challenge to shit without straining and saw a bird “waaaaay up there”; something I still think about when I go.

If nothing else, I cherish my stay for the funny and fun memories it created. Like most of my childhood, it wasn’t particularly pleasant at the time; it was merely tolerable; but I now hold those memories dear. It’s the closest we’d ever been; a bit of how it would be to have him as my (only) brother. He was an only child, at least as far as I was ever told, and, though he’s only a little older than me, he basically treated me like a little brother.

video review : Home Alone

video review : Home Alone

The climax of this movie, in which an eight-year-old boy booby-traps his house to prevent two burglars from robbing it while his family is away on Christmas vacation, is quite entertaining. He uses ice, tar, fire and whatever else he can find in the house to make even something as simple as walking up the stairs or turning a doorknob a dangerous experience for would-be-robbers.

In a more serious movie; one that doesn’t sugarcoat its violence in slapstick comedy; the two burglars, named The Wet Bandits because one of them likes to clog the sink and leave the water running when they rob a house, would probably be dead. Here they just hurt and humiliate themselves in amusing ways. There’s a scene involving a spider that’s actually hilarious.

What’s annoying is the boy. I guess he’s supposed to be cute and he might look cute, but the way he acts; the character and the actor who plays him; is the worst thing about the movie. When a Wet Bandit falls victim to one of his pranks, he celebrates with a “Yes!” When he glides across a sheet of ice to escape a policeman, he lets out an exaggerated “Wooah!” It’s just annoying.

With that, I think Home Alone would be better if Kevin’s character were presented in a more realistic way. I’d also like to see some background to how he’s able to come-up with such an ingenious Battle Plan. There are no scenes of him making booby traps before his family mistakenly leaves him Home Alone, which is an inclusion that would work wonders for the plot’s believability factor.

my rating : 3 of 5

1990

video review : Home Alone 2 [ Lost In New York ]
 

Ryan :

You’re joking, right? You wanted them to develop how he came up with his “battle plan?” Out of everything in this phenomenal, CLASSIC movie, that was what you found to be the most unrealistic aspect?

a dream I had about being featured on a “reality” TV show with Jack Osbourne

I guess The Osbournes was still on TV. Either that or Jack and Kelly were featured on a new “reality” show. In either case, there I was; you couldn’t see me, but you could hear my voice; on the phone with Jack as he walked thru the mansion he lived in, telling me how fat and greedy his sister was.

He said her and her friend were selling, or trying to sell, big slices of pizza one day, presumably homemade pizza. When nobody bought them, he said, they sat down and ate the whole pie themselves. I didn’t know if the story was true or not, but it was funny and I was happy to be on the show.

2012 September 03

video review : Night Of The Living Dead

video review : Night Of The Living Dead

What’s missing from the title is that The Living Dead are also murderous predators who want nothing more than to eat the flesh of their prey; undead people. It’s the gloomy doomy plot that makes it thrilling.

The ghouls stumble about slowly and are fragile enough to push out of the way, but there’s strength in numbers, so a boarded-up house in Pennsylvania is only the safest place until there are enough of them to break in.

my rating : 5 of 5

1968

video review : Dawn Of The Dead

the time I went to Canada to stay with my father

It was June of 1995 and my mother; someone I never loved, seldom liked and often didn’t get along with; had her mind made up about me going to stay with my father. I say “my” father, but I don’t know if he really is or not, just as I don’t know if my mother is actually my mother. They’re probably my real parents, especially in the case of my mother, but that’s as far as I can go.

At the time, I remembered meeting him once before for what seemed like a very brief period of time. This time the two of them planned for me to stay with him in Ajax, Ontario, for weeks. I don’t remember if it was a few weeks or several, but I know I didn’t want to go. My mother knew it too, but she made me go anyway. That was another reason to dislike her.

Her intentions might have been good, but I don’t care and certainly didn’t at the time. I went willingly in the sense that I wasn’t dragged out of the house, kicking and screaming, but I hated having to stay with a stranger for such a long time. What could I do though? Doing to her what I wanted to do would’ve landed me in a place that’s even worse for even longer.

So I went, driven by her with my grandmother and maybe a brother or sister along for the ride. The one thing to be happy about was that the new Michael Jackson album; History; had just been released. I bought it that day; the day we went to Canada; at a music store before they left to go back to Detroit. I was a big Michael Jackson fan and quite excited about the purchase.

It came with a mock Tabloid. The album itself was a thick plastic case that held two gold CDs and a booklet. I was so excited that I’d started playing it at my father’s friend’s place before we even got to his sister’s house where we’d be staying. The History album was probably the best thing about my stay, which I might’ve actually enjoyed if I wasn’t forced into it.

My father, it turned out, wasn’t around most of the time. He apparently lived there, in an upstairs bedroom, but it seemed he was gone for several days at a time. That was totally fine with me. I didn’t want to be around him anyway. I certainly didn’t want to develop a traditional father-and-son relationship with him. I just wanted to do my time and get it over with.

His sister had two boys; Chad and Troy; who also lived there. They stayed upstairs and each had their own bedroom. Chad was maybe a couple of years younger than me. Troy was maybe a couple of years older. I slept in the basement alone at night, along with their desolate pet rabbit, but that’s also where the three of us spent a lot of our time during the day.

That was especially the case when I first got there as they made an effort to befriend me. They were the type of kids who often had friends over to the house, so I also met a lot of their friends, some of whom were also close to my father’s sister; their mom, I assume. She was nice enough to me and seemed likable, but I didn’t want to develop a relationship with her.

I didn’t want to develop a relationship or get close with anybody. I just wanted to be left alone, which was hard to do in a house full of people. They even had relatives from out of town who visited and spent the night while I was there, including an attractive light-skinned girl Troy jokingly made sure to introduce to me as my “coooousin” so that I wouldn’t hit on her.

We had fun times, but I liked and got along with Chad a lot more. He and I were always friendly. I made him laugh a lot and never had any problems with him. Troy was another story. We connected with hip-hop; it was him who encouraged me to buy Grand Puba’s 2000 CD; but we generally butted heads and annoyed each other with petty arguments.

It never turned into anything serious, but it gradually got worse over time. By the end, when it was about time for me to go back home, I think we’d started to despise each other to the point where it became harder and harder to keep up a friendly front. It was the kind of relationship in which two people constantly insult each other but only half jokingly.

At one point, he and his best friend; a guy he claimed to have a telepathic connection with; had some girls over. They watched Star Trek in the basement while Chad and I stayed out of the way on the first floor. Perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, when the girls left, I made fun of him for watching Star Trek with them instead of having sex.

I wasn’t just being mean though. Every insult was, as far as I was concerned, a justified retaliation for some insult Troy had thrown my way sometimes days earlier. That’s just the kind of relationship we had and Chad would laugh with me. We also laughed watching Heart Of Courage when they showed an old lady hitting an intruder on the head with a frying pan.

My best times there include the ones I spent with Chad and a friend of his. I think his name was Steve. We rode bikes together and even went out for ice cream with (Chad’s) mom one day. Those were rare moments of genuine fun for me. Nightly tinnitus from a possible ear infection was the most depressing. The rest of the time lingered somewhere in the middle.

That middle time included a tall skinny white girl; a friend of theirs who’d come by to hang out with us. Her name might’ve been Kila. One night my father came down to the basement and saw us sitting together on the couch. We were flipping thru a school yearbook. I was picking out the cutest girls. After she left, he teased me about how close we were sitting.

We didn’t talk much. I barely asked him any questions and never even said his name. I never said his sister’s name neither. I might not have said anyone’s name. One day he said something to me about the fact that I didn’t say their names when I was talking to them, which I defended by saying it was unnecessary because it was obvious who I was talking to.

I’d started taking his sister’s radio from the kitchen to play while I fell asleep at night. It was just to block or distract from my tinnitus and I always put it back. One day I saw that she’d left a note on it, saying not to take it anymore. The fact that she left a note instead of telling me to my face is just a metaphor for how disconnected I was from them as an extended family.

I used to eat three or four hot dogs with my beans. She, or the other woman who lived with us for a portion of my visit, made a negative remark about it. I already hated cooking and eating with other people in the kitchen, but I especially hated doing it around them. I tried my best to only eat when they were gone, but sometimes they’d come home during the process.

My stay lasted for weeks. I can’t remember how many, but it introduced me to more family members and friends than I’d like to count; including a knowledgeable DJ who taught me you don’t have to understand the words of a song in order to like it. It concluded after Caribana; an annual festival Troy and his friends hyped as the biggest event of the year.

They told me how fun it would be. They told me about all the fine girls that would be there. It was a group effort to get me to go with them, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to do anything with them. All I wanted to do was go home. Even when Troy came back after partying the night away and dumped a bag full of (girl) phone numbers on the kitchen table, I had no regrets.

The end had come. It was my last day and I remember it clearer than most. I was taking the bus home and my father was going to drive me to the bus station, so we had to leave early when everyone else was still in bed. I didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone, but he made me go upstairs to say it to his sister and whoever the other woman was she slept in the bedroom with.

It was perhaps the most awkward goodbye I ever said. I don’t even remember going all the way into the room, but I didn’t give a damn. I was ready to go; not to see my mother; that bitch; but to be back home. He gave me a hug at the bus station, which I returned half-heartedly, and that was it; the last time I ever saw my father, ever want to and probably ever will.