Thursday, May 29, 2014

Would You Like To Play A Game?

When I was a kid my mother, sister and I used to frequently visit my aunt who lived out in the country in the southeastern part of Ohio. She had four kids. Nick was the oldest followed by Larry, Mary Liz and Bernard. My older sister Teresa and Mary Liz were close to the same age and so were Bernard and I. My sister Karen was the youngest.

When you get that many kids together it's inevitable that they will want to play games and were  no different than most. For a time it was friendly games like hide and go seek. After we grew out of that the game we wanted to play the most was called Hotbelt. I have no idea where the idea for this game came from or why we wanted to play it as badly as we did. I mean we would literally beg our parents to let us play and even though they didn't think it was a good idea eventually they would give in against their better wishes.

So just what does a session of Hotbelt consist of you may well ask yourself? There was a very large tree in the front yard that was the "base." As long as you were touching it you were safe. A belt was hidden in somewhere in the area, it could be behind the house, to the side of it but never too far off. The idea was that you could either look for it or find a place to hide. Once it was found you would have to make your way to the base. Sounds pretty simple right? Except of course that's not everything, there's one more piece of the puzzle left to talk about.

The person who found the belt would then try and catch the rest of the kids as they (usually) would run to the base. As they chased them they would whip them in the buttocks area with the belt. Seriously. This is the game we would beg to play. I don't think I'll ever understand what was wrong with us mentally but we always wanted to play it no matter how afraid we were (and I was quite afraid) of being whipped. My skinny butt got whipped quite a few times. Maybe that was when I first got an inkling of the value of being quiet and sneaky.

After everybody had made it back to the base the "whipper" would then go hide the belt and we'd do it all over again. We would play this game for hours. For some reason Nick and Larry always seemed to be the ones who found the belt. In fact I can't remember a single time that I myself ever found it. There was a reason for that if you can see where this is heading. It wasn't until many years later and we were all older that I found out that Nick and Larry were cheating. They would tell each other where the belt was hidden with the understanding that neither one of them would use it on the other.

With hindsight in now seemed so clear. Perhaps we were blinded by the stupidity of youth. After all, it was simple to reason that they were older, bigger and faster than the rest of us. I myself was short and skinny, two things that you cannot say about me today. Why wouldn't they always win against the rest of us? I tend to chalk it up to being naive. At that age you don't realize that people cheat, they don't always tell the truth or try to follow the rules. Sometimes they'll do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes they'll do things just to be mean just because they can.

Personally I'm kind of glad that I was so clueless, that it took more time for me to learn those lessons, some of which in just a few short years were drilled into my head in a rather cruel manner. Then the reasons for that treatment would be for where I lived, my lack of stylish or cool clothes or how I looked. Kids can be quite cruel when given ample opportunities. I don't think my cousins put a lot of thought into what they were doing, it was probably just funny to them and they didn't mean any serious harm.

No, I am glad I was able to hang on to my naivete,, to stay innocent and stave of the realities of the world just a little bit longer. The harsh knowledge of real life would come knocking altogether too soon. That's just the way it was and honestly it's part of what made me who I am today. Not every memory or story can have a happy ending after all and we aren't owed anything. It's what we do with it and what we learn that ends up being most important. Life is life.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Ten For Tuesday Episode 060



Another Tuesday gone by and it's another late episode. This time I intended to upload this one at work on my dinner break using their free Wi-Fi. Unfortunately the free Wi-Fi there has been getting worse and worse. To use it you have to go to a login page and click on the logo that means you agree to their rules, etc, etc. Usually I have problems connecting but eventually after disconnecting and reconnecting several times it will work. In the very worst situations I've ad to restart my laptop and go from there. But on this Tuesday it would give me the prompt that I needed to go to the login page but it wouldn't connect me with it. It always tried to go to my home page. I tried everything I know and it would never work. If you're asking if I tried to call IT and get their help the answer is no. In the evenings they have the equivalent of the D team that knows how to do a few things and that's about it. At least I can use the Wi-Fi at my home so now enough boring details and onto the music: 

The Draft – Little Mascara
Wool – S.O.S.
Chris Wollard & The Ship Thieves – Anybody Else
Ozomatli – Brighter
The Slackers – Yes It’s True
Los Mocosos – Caliente
Grupo Fantasma – Cumbia Del Coyote
Violent Femmes – Freak Magnet
Stiff Little Fingers – Roots Radicals Rockers and Reggae
Ian Dury & The Blockheads – I Wanna Be Straight

Ten For Tuesday is a podcast dedicated to playing the music I couldn't find anywhere else. The music I like varies from style to style, genre to genre and era to era. You will hear punk, ska, rock, Americana, metal, country, rockabilly and more from all over the world. It doesn't matter if it's a major label or indie as long as I like it then it gets played. The motto is Less Talk More Music which means you won't hear me waxing poetic for fifteen minutes between songs. At TFT its all about the music...and me of course.

Email: tenfortuesday@gmail.com Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Old episodes can be found by searching for Ten For Tuesday at www.archive.org.
 


Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Ten For Tuesday Episode 59



Okay, I know it's not Tuesday but give me a break, every member of my immediate family has been sick off and on for the past two weeks and it's been rough. Enough about my problems though, I had the lineup for this episode completed way ahead of time and the music for the episode after that selected as well when I saw last week that Bob Mould was releasing a new album and had a song out for said new album. I couldn't stomach the idea of waiting until Episode 61 to play it so I took out a song, revamped the order to make sure I like how everything fit and there you have it. In the end I think the inclusion of his song makes the episode better and let's be honest, it's not like I could sit on this track and wait around. It's Bob Mould and if you're paying attention I love his music and play it a lot. End of story.

Bob Mould – Hey Mr. Grey
Among Giants – The Pond
Black Wine – Flatland
The Blases - I Walk Alone
Articles Of Faith – Every Man For Himself
The Latter Day Saints - 592
The Haskells – Spinning Around
Augustines – Cruel City
Lydia Loveless – Head
Aggressors B.C. – Tone Of The Times

Ten For Tuesday is a podcast dedicated to playing the music I couldn't find anywhere else. The music I like varies from style to style, genre to genre and era to era. You will hear punk, ska, rock, Americana, metal, country, rockabilly and more from all over the world. It doesn't matter if it's a major label or indie as long as I like it then it gets played. The motto is Less Talk More Music which means you won't hear me waxing poetic for fifteen minutes between songs. At TFT its all about the music...and me of course.

Email: tenfortuesday@gmail.com Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Old episodes can be found by searching for Ten For Tuesday at www.archive.org.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Where's The New Episode?

As you can tell a new episode of Ten For Tuesday did not come out on Tuesday. Right now it's past midnight and I have come home from work where I will try and assemble it and get it uploaded at some point. You have to forgive me, not only have I been sick for most of the last two weeks but so has my family to varying degrees. While I'm not firing on all cylinders yet I'm getting closer day by day. Unless I get sick again that is.

Still I've managed to go to work and get other things done even though my body almost collapsed on me at one point and I stayed in bed for quite a while. I'll spare you the disgusting details of everything that has gone wrong with me but it's suffice to say the range has been great. I know I'll be very happy once I get rid of the poison ivy (I'm extremely allergic to it) and the cough that's been plaguing me. Even moderate health would feel good right about now. So there you have it, the reason
behind the tardy episode is not so compelling in interesting. It's just life.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Saturday Is The Hang Out Day

Saturday is quickly becoming the hang out day for me and my son. During the week we usually only get to see each other for about half an hour in the morning each day. I get off work at midnight and get into bed two or three hours later then I'm up at 7am to get him ready for school. Afterwards I (try) to go back to sleep for a few hours. It's not easy but I do it for him. So when Saturday comes around I try and make it about him. Right now we're rolling out on our own for at least every other week and more often if we can.

I don't know if my wife quite understands it, it's not that we don't want to be around her but I think since he spends all of his time with her during the week after school he wants some special time for just us guys. Plus it's  not like we spend the entire day away from her. Just yesterday I did some yardwork first and then we boogied out of the house about 3:30pm to the primary destination, The Comic Empire. He chose a few comic books and I got The Walking Dead #20. Then we went to an electronics repair shop to see what was wrong with a Nintendo DS XL that my wife had found. She's been hitting Craigslist finding free stuff and some people were moving and left a bunch of stuff on the curb. She found the DS there along with a Playstation 2 amongst other things.

The guy there checked it out and although it partially works it would take about $75 to replace the top screen. We decided to think about it and went over to Vintage Stock to see how much the used ones go for in their store. Once that was done Walmart was next to check on getting a stylus for each of our tablets. That was a bust, you can get them online from their website for a fourth of the price that they charge on the store. That's very strange. Then we backtracked and went over to Toys R Us to see how much they charged for a new DS. Now that we were completely armed with our information (and he got a chance to play on their demo model) our bellies were rumbling so he chose McDonalds as the place to fill them. It doesn't hurt that he can play there and I can use the free wi-fi.

A few hours and a lot of play with new friends later we called my wife to have her meet us at Toys R Us to check on a karaoke machine that her mother wanted us to buy him for his birthday. While there I decided to give up on the idea of getting the DS fixed and instead bought a new 2DS. For the price it just made more sense to buy something new with a warranty that is a better product. He didn't see me so this will be a complete surprise for him. My wife wasn't so sure but he is like me and his uncle Gary, we love our electronic toys. The night still wasn't over though. Next up was Target where my wife wanted to check on some new jeans for our son and her as well. We found a pair for him, he's growing so much that none of his fit him anymore.

I also looked at the stylus they had but found the situation was the same as I had found earlier at Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, you guessed it, my wife wanted to go there next for a few things so back we went to the same store we'd visited earlier. Eventually I got her to leave as the night was getting quite late and we made our way home where I was sure I was going to be staying. I got our son a bath and changed myself to get ready for bed only to find that we were out of milk which we would be needing in the morning. Yeah, back on came the clothes and back to Walmart (a different one this time) I went. It was over as fast as I could make it because now it was after midnight.

I made it home but not into bed for a little bit. It was a very busy day spent running from place to place and then back to the same places but finally it was over. I was exhausted. Sleep was now to be mine. Who knows what we'll do on our next hang out day, maybe some hiking or even a movie. I just hope it won't be as much running around. So what do you do on your hang out days?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.