Okay. So. It goes like this...
I had the whole thing worked out in my head. I was going to get home from work at around 4 p.m. on the afternoon in question. So I made sure that Lindsey knew that, and that I wanted us to do something fun and exciting, as it’s a rare thing that I get a Friday night off from my weekend job as a valet parker.
Well, I was on time. Lindsey wasn’t.
At around 6:45 she waltzed in the door with shopping bags from the local market ... and Saks Fifth Avenue. She was very excited about a new shirt that she’d bought for entirely too much money (a little black short-sleeved thing with a hood and an extre-e-e-emely low neckline), and she immediately modeled it for me right there in the hallway.
When I asked her what was in the other bags, she replied, "Dinner."
So much for the romantic dinner at the fine dining restaurant of our choice, I thought. And then I thought some more. Hmmm. Chicken thighs? Chickpeas? Tomatoes? Pita bread? A spice rub made up of cinnamon, curry, cumin and cayenne pepper? And she even bought a bottle of wine!? (Lindsey doesn’t drink. Later, I learned it was for the sauce. But that didn’t stop me from drinking what she didn’t use.)
This was more than your typical throw-together spaghetti night. Clearly. So I said to myself, "Okay. This’ll work."
So after helping her with dinner and setting the table and lighting candles and rigging the laptop to the stereo for a random mix of music, and after being extremely lovey-dovey throughout the course of the meal, and after being totally smitten by the way she looked in that new shirt, I very intircately weaved a series of compliments into a tapestry of reasons why she is the perfect, only woman for me. Then, while kissing her left hand, I deftly slipped the ring into view right over her ring finger. She took one look at it and froze.
"What’s that?" she asked me, terrified.
I didn’t expect that.
"Do I really need to give it a caption?" I replied. Then I slipped off my chair and onto one knee.
After the question, there were tears, and hugs, and kisses, and much laughter. And after several minutes of this I had to say, "Baby, umm, you still haven’t answered." And there was more laughter and hugging, and she replied, "Yes, I’ll marry you, baby."
You guys can figure out the rest...I’ve gotta go to work now and pay for that sucker.
Monday, June 29, 2009
'Bye to Dad
(Originally published on my now-defunct MySpace page, spring of 2008)
My Dad died this morning.
Mom had called the whole family in to Memorial Hospital in Belleville on Sunday afternoon. That was scary enough in itself, because while she was always quick to call me in for moral support, she was ever-hesitant to trouble the grandparents with what would likely be a false alarm.
Not this time, though. Which, you know, baffled me. Because when I got to the hospital and looked at him lying there, breathing a bit heavily but otherwise totally responsive, I thought, "Shit, he looks fine. Sick, sure, but he’ll be alright."
That was the first time I was wrong that day.
The second time came when Lindsey and I were leaving. Dad was incapable of verbal responses by then, so I took his hand and told him I was going home to get some sleep, and that he should squeeze my hand if he understood. He squeezed. And kept squeezing. And he wouldn’t let go. I leaned down next to his ear and I said, "You stay here. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then. Stay here. Okay?"
He nodded -- the first visible reaction to a spoken word that anyone had seen from him in quite some time. I didn’t see it, but Lindsey and Mom did, and they were visibly shocked, and took it as a sign that maybe he was still going to recover. Myself? I was still shocked at the firmness of that grip.
It was remarkable. Later, in the car, I told Lindsey that he’d never before given me such an honest and earnest expression of ... love? Connection? I don’t know. Something. At any rate, I had been a rock all day, immovable. To my sister, I said, "I’ve been prepared for this for years. I’m fine." And I was. Right up to the point that I got to the parking lot. Then the strength and the pleading, earnest desperation of that last grip from my father turned me into a complete shuddering, drooling, growling mass of wracking sobs.
I took a sleeping pill at 9:30, and went to bed. At 4:30 in the morning, a St. Louis Police officer woke me at my front door to tell me that Memorial had been trying to reach me. ’Nuff said, right?
When I got to the hospital, Mom gave me a few minutes alone with him. I apologized for not making it in time. I apologized for not staying. I’m sure that’s what he was asking me to do. I should have stayed. Everyone dies alone. That’s what they say anyway.
But fuck that. No one should die without their family with them.
Enough.
Funeral arrangements are underway. It’s looking like it will be at Dean-Toberman funeral home in Coffeen. The visitation will likely be on Wednesday from 6-8 p.m., with a service the following morning and burial at Camp Butler in Springfield.
That’s all I have time for now.
My Dad died this morning.
Mom had called the whole family in to Memorial Hospital in Belleville on Sunday afternoon. That was scary enough in itself, because while she was always quick to call me in for moral support, she was ever-hesitant to trouble the grandparents with what would likely be a false alarm.
Not this time, though. Which, you know, baffled me. Because when I got to the hospital and looked at him lying there, breathing a bit heavily but otherwise totally responsive, I thought, "Shit, he looks fine. Sick, sure, but he’ll be alright."
That was the first time I was wrong that day.
The second time came when Lindsey and I were leaving. Dad was incapable of verbal responses by then, so I took his hand and told him I was going home to get some sleep, and that he should squeeze my hand if he understood. He squeezed. And kept squeezing. And he wouldn’t let go. I leaned down next to his ear and I said, "You stay here. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then. Stay here. Okay?"
He nodded -- the first visible reaction to a spoken word that anyone had seen from him in quite some time. I didn’t see it, but Lindsey and Mom did, and they were visibly shocked, and took it as a sign that maybe he was still going to recover. Myself? I was still shocked at the firmness of that grip.
It was remarkable. Later, in the car, I told Lindsey that he’d never before given me such an honest and earnest expression of ... love? Connection? I don’t know. Something. At any rate, I had been a rock all day, immovable. To my sister, I said, "I’ve been prepared for this for years. I’m fine." And I was. Right up to the point that I got to the parking lot. Then the strength and the pleading, earnest desperation of that last grip from my father turned me into a complete shuddering, drooling, growling mass of wracking sobs.
I took a sleeping pill at 9:30, and went to bed. At 4:30 in the morning, a St. Louis Police officer woke me at my front door to tell me that Memorial had been trying to reach me. ’Nuff said, right?
When I got to the hospital, Mom gave me a few minutes alone with him. I apologized for not making it in time. I apologized for not staying. I’m sure that’s what he was asking me to do. I should have stayed. Everyone dies alone. That’s what they say anyway.
But fuck that. No one should die without their family with them.
Enough.
Funeral arrangements are underway. It’s looking like it will be at Dean-Toberman funeral home in Coffeen. The visitation will likely be on Wednesday from 6-8 p.m., with a service the following morning and burial at Camp Butler in Springfield.
That’s all I have time for now.
The Clone Wars Review
(Originally published on my now-defunct MySpace page in the summer of 2008)
First of all, let me get this out of the way: I genuinely enjoyed The Clone Wars.
I know what you're thinking: "Of course Terry liked Clone Wars. Geeky sci-fi fanboy would like a mushy cow patty if it could whistle the Star Wars theme while wielding a lightsaber."
Well, it's not really that simple. See, when I'm critiquing something -- any kind of art, really, and especially cinema -- I consider two questions:
1) What was the artist trying to accomplish, and
2) Was the artist successful in realizing that goal?
Remember how Lucas has always maintained that Star Wars was based on the old sci-fi movie serials from back in the day? Of course, being feature-length motion pictures, they were allowed to be more in-depth with their stories and characters in the films than those shortened episodic pieces allowed their creators to be (And who cared, really? It was World War Two. People went to the cinema for mindless escapism. But that's another topic.)
Well, it seems to me that the more condensed episodic nature of a show like "The Clone Wars" has allowed Lucas to take Star Wars back to its serialized roots. And, to that end, he's allowed himself to give the show a purer resemblance to its source material. Hence the grandiose voiceover at the beginning (reminiscent of the old cinematic newsreels from WWII, which are not at all out of place here) and the overly stylized adaptation of the original Star Wars score, more bombastic and playful than the original.
"The Clone Wars" is rife with everything that made Star Wars the phenomenon it was to me as a child. There's the brash hero, the reckless youth, the wise old master, and the feisty young woman, and the droids. In addition, they've thrown dozens of the clones into the mix who, as stated in other reviews, are the real darlings of the film. And let us never forget the fact that there are lightsabers. Lots and lots of lightsabers.
The clones' interaction with Ahsoka alone makes her character justifiable. She's like an orphaned youth that gets adopted by some Army unit in WWII. (Think Bucky with Captain America in the old Golden Age comic books.) They clearly get a kick out of having her around, and it's easy to see them (especially Rex) go from scepticism to adoration in their dealings with her.
Ahsoka herself is spunky, cute, cocky, at times badass ... and, sadly, cursed with a bit of bad dialog. But not too much. Just enough to remind us that this is, above all other things, a Star Wars film.
There is one thing, and only one thing, that pained me beyond measure: Jabba's uncle, Zero. Oh. My. GOD!!! The slug's overly-stylized, weaselly gangster voice made me cringe. I mean that. I visibly cringed every time this ridiculous character spoke. I'm sure he was based on some character from some Cagney film I've never seen, but that voice emerging from a giant Hutt body, sounding like the polar opposite of Jabba's deep, guttural utterings, was just ... wrong...
But the battle scenes were not. Nope. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them were downright brutal ... much more so than those we glimpsed in "Revenge of the Sith." Those clones, man. They've got a hard life.
Here's my advice for those of you on the fence (or in flat-out refusal mode): Dismiss all pre-conceived notions as to what you imagined the Clone Wars show should be. (I never allow myself that sort of conceit. It's not my film, after all.) Pretend instead that you're going to the theater to investigate a curious and dubious animated feature film that has its roots heavily fixed in 40s cinema sci-fi nostalgia. Then pretend they gave it lightsabers. It's good fun. Seriously. I think, as a wise old (and dead) Jedi once said, "you'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ;)
(And, yes, I'm likely going to fork over the cash to give it a second go.)
First of all, let me get this out of the way: I genuinely enjoyed The Clone Wars.
I know what you're thinking: "Of course Terry liked Clone Wars. Geeky sci-fi fanboy would like a mushy cow patty if it could whistle the Star Wars theme while wielding a lightsaber."
Well, it's not really that simple. See, when I'm critiquing something -- any kind of art, really, and especially cinema -- I consider two questions:
1) What was the artist trying to accomplish, and
2) Was the artist successful in realizing that goal?
Remember how Lucas has always maintained that Star Wars was based on the old sci-fi movie serials from back in the day? Of course, being feature-length motion pictures, they were allowed to be more in-depth with their stories and characters in the films than those shortened episodic pieces allowed their creators to be (And who cared, really? It was World War Two. People went to the cinema for mindless escapism. But that's another topic.)
Well, it seems to me that the more condensed episodic nature of a show like "The Clone Wars" has allowed Lucas to take Star Wars back to its serialized roots. And, to that end, he's allowed himself to give the show a purer resemblance to its source material. Hence the grandiose voiceover at the beginning (reminiscent of the old cinematic newsreels from WWII, which are not at all out of place here) and the overly stylized adaptation of the original Star Wars score, more bombastic and playful than the original.
"The Clone Wars" is rife with everything that made Star Wars the phenomenon it was to me as a child. There's the brash hero, the reckless youth, the wise old master, and the feisty young woman, and the droids. In addition, they've thrown dozens of the clones into the mix who, as stated in other reviews, are the real darlings of the film. And let us never forget the fact that there are lightsabers. Lots and lots of lightsabers.
The clones' interaction with Ahsoka alone makes her character justifiable. She's like an orphaned youth that gets adopted by some Army unit in WWII. (Think Bucky with Captain America in the old Golden Age comic books.) They clearly get a kick out of having her around, and it's easy to see them (especially Rex) go from scepticism to adoration in their dealings with her.
Ahsoka herself is spunky, cute, cocky, at times badass ... and, sadly, cursed with a bit of bad dialog. But not too much. Just enough to remind us that this is, above all other things, a Star Wars film.
There is one thing, and only one thing, that pained me beyond measure: Jabba's uncle, Zero. Oh. My. GOD!!! The slug's overly-stylized, weaselly gangster voice made me cringe. I mean that. I visibly cringed every time this ridiculous character spoke. I'm sure he was based on some character from some Cagney film I've never seen, but that voice emerging from a giant Hutt body, sounding like the polar opposite of Jabba's deep, guttural utterings, was just ... wrong...
But the battle scenes were not. Nope. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them were downright brutal ... much more so than those we glimpsed in "Revenge of the Sith." Those clones, man. They've got a hard life.
Here's my advice for those of you on the fence (or in flat-out refusal mode): Dismiss all pre-conceived notions as to what you imagined the Clone Wars show should be. (I never allow myself that sort of conceit. It's not my film, after all.) Pretend instead that you're going to the theater to investigate a curious and dubious animated feature film that has its roots heavily fixed in 40s cinema sci-fi nostalgia. Then pretend they gave it lightsabers. It's good fun. Seriously. I think, as a wise old (and dead) Jedi once said, "you'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ;)
(And, yes, I'm likely going to fork over the cash to give it a second go.)
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Post #1 (It's all about the cycling)
For those who said I couldn't do it: I did. So fuck off.
Tuesdays are, without exception, my day off at work. The one that I allowed an exception to this was two weeks ago, to photograph a major forum taking place at the Columbia High School, I immediately started receiving requests from both editor and reporter to do other Tuesday shoots. (The two people who made these requests have subsequently disappeared. Coincidentally, my neighbors' dogs have gained a great deal of weight. Coincidentally.)
Most Tuesdays I do nothing. By nothing I mean that I play video games, burn away hours on the internet, chat with friends, and try to suppress an urge to down several bottles of wine, just to see what happens.
This past Tuesday, however, Lindsey was off work as well. And, since my category in the upcoming Hillsboro Roubaix was filled, I decided to take my girl and my bike to the hometown and ride the course, just to see what all of the fuss is about.
But, as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself...
The Hillsboro Roubaix is an annual cycling race with a 22-mile circuit that snakes through the country roads to the south and west of Hillsboro, Illinois, culminating in a 1/4 mile climb up the tallest hill in the county, a subsequent plummet down the other side of the same hill which leads into a further half mile of brick (!?) streets. Since 2002, it has consistently been named the Hardest Road Ride in the Midwest. (The race also has the honor of being described as the fastest-growing race in the Midwest. Hence the full field in my category.)
"Hardest road ride, huh?" I thought. "Balls. I grew up in that town. Rode my bike everywhere. I'm all over it."
Armed with my Trek 1500, a brand new carbon fiber helmet, a cycling computer and heartrate monitor, stylish white shoes with carbon fiber soles, a cycling jersey with a cow's ass on the back, and a pair of uber-hot cycling shorts, I set out to do just one trip around the 22-mile circuit.
Within two miles, I could feel the pain.
Within another two miles, I was beginning to question whether I was ready for this ride.
By the time I'd reached the 14-mile point, and as I was struggling to maintain 5 mph on a steep hill while dodging the three large hungry dogs intent in sampling the meat from my pumping, blood-engorged calves, I was experiencing very real fear that I wasn't going to complete the course alive. Or, at least, intact.
In the end, I couldn't so much as contemplate the climb up Major Hill. What a killer. Can't wait to try it again.
Only next time, I'm bringing mace. For the fucking dogs.
Tuesdays are, without exception, my day off at work. The one that I allowed an exception to this was two weeks ago, to photograph a major forum taking place at the Columbia High School, I immediately started receiving requests from both editor and reporter to do other Tuesday shoots. (The two people who made these requests have subsequently disappeared. Coincidentally, my neighbors' dogs have gained a great deal of weight. Coincidentally.)
Most Tuesdays I do nothing. By nothing I mean that I play video games, burn away hours on the internet, chat with friends, and try to suppress an urge to down several bottles of wine, just to see what happens.
This past Tuesday, however, Lindsey was off work as well. And, since my category in the upcoming Hillsboro Roubaix was filled, I decided to take my girl and my bike to the hometown and ride the course, just to see what all of the fuss is about.
But, as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself...
The Hillsboro Roubaix is an annual cycling race with a 22-mile circuit that snakes through the country roads to the south and west of Hillsboro, Illinois, culminating in a 1/4 mile climb up the tallest hill in the county, a subsequent plummet down the other side of the same hill which leads into a further half mile of brick (!?) streets. Since 2002, it has consistently been named the Hardest Road Ride in the Midwest. (The race also has the honor of being described as the fastest-growing race in the Midwest. Hence the full field in my category.)
"Hardest road ride, huh?" I thought. "Balls. I grew up in that town. Rode my bike everywhere. I'm all over it."
Armed with my Trek 1500, a brand new carbon fiber helmet, a cycling computer and heartrate monitor, stylish white shoes with carbon fiber soles, a cycling jersey with a cow's ass on the back, and a pair of uber-hot cycling shorts, I set out to do just one trip around the 22-mile circuit.
Within two miles, I could feel the pain.
Within another two miles, I was beginning to question whether I was ready for this ride.
By the time I'd reached the 14-mile point, and as I was struggling to maintain 5 mph on a steep hill while dodging the three large hungry dogs intent in sampling the meat from my pumping, blood-engorged calves, I was experiencing very real fear that I wasn't going to complete the course alive. Or, at least, intact.
In the end, I couldn't so much as contemplate the climb up Major Hill. What a killer. Can't wait to try it again.
Only next time, I'm bringing mace. For the fucking dogs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)