notmovingpictures Episode 79 : So Many Years Of Suckitude

I'm really late getting this out. I recorded once and then decided to start over. Now, well, take a listen and see if it's worth it. And then the Browns found a way to look completely unprepared...........again.



Opening music: Alloy - Live To See The Day
Closing music: Porcupine - Witness To A Chase Scene

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com  Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.not movingpictures.blogspot.com

Older episodes can be found at www.archive.org. Just search for notmovingpictures.

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

Photo Album: The Supersuckers @ The Shrine, Tulsa

Here's a somewhat murky shot of The Supersuckers who played at the venue Shrine here in Tulsa on December 16th, 2016. It was a raucous, energetic show and a nice early Christmas gift to me, from me.


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

Don't Confuse Alone With Lonely

I spent the Christmas holidays by myself, unless of course you count the sporadic visitations of Alex The Cat and I don’t. My wife and son were visiting her cousin in Memphis and unfortunately I couldn’t get time off from work. They tend to not give me time off around the holidays even though I’m the only supervisor in the evenings and those that were on 1st shift jumped on requesting it early. The thing is that when people found out I was going to be alone they began to besiege me with invitations to join them but thankfully, I was able to defer their good intentions. You see, I don’t mind being alone, as a matter of fact I was looking forward to spending some time by myself.

For some reason people tend to confuse alone with lonely. The two are not the same. Time spent by myself is usually that rarest thing where I get to indulge myself. And I did. I stayed up as late as I liked, slept in without being concerned with setting an alarm. I ate pizza on Christmas Eve and Christmas day and since it rained for over two days straight I barely left the house. While I did get two podcasts recorded and ready to go mainly I read or caught up on my Netflix queue. Basically I just did what I wanted when I wanted. I didn’t venture outside until after midnight on Saturday. I finally braved the torrential downpours to get a few groceries and hit Whataburger for some comfort food.

I've said it many times that I'm not a social person not do I care much for celebrating holidays. If it weren't for my wife and son I'd never have a tree up or decorations of any kind around the house. It's just not my thing and there is nothing wrong with that. Not everybody is the same and I feel we should embrace what makes us unique. I'm just trying to be me and stay true to myself. As I get older it seems so clear to me how much unnecessary grief and drama we put ourselves through trying to project an image of what we really are not. Having said that I know that at times I drive my wife crazy with the way I am because she's Peruvian and they are very social people.

So there you have it. I was alone for Christmas and not sad about it. Sure I would have liked to be around my family but since I couldn't be, spending some quality time with myself was a nice option to have.

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

notmovingpictures Episode 036: Alone Doesn't Mean Lonely

It's the last day of the year and I've been wondering if I'll get this out in time. Once again it's a solo conversation this time about spending the Christmas holidays by myself while I muse on the idea that alone doesn't mean lonely. Then I delve into the latest Star Wars movie The Force Awakens and why all of the whiners and complainers out there are just wrong about it. Is it a perfect movie? No, but then what is? It is a very good movie in my opinion and it had to bridge the old with the new. It does that very well. There were moments that had me.......well, just listen to the podcast and you'll understand.



Opening Music: Alloy - Live To See The Day
Closing Music: Supernova - Chewbacca

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

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

Learning To Ride

Since it was such an unusually nice day today my wife thought it was time that we taught our soon to be eight year old son how to ride a bicycle sans training wheels. He had won a one hundred dollar gift card in a anti-smoking contest last year so at Christmas we bought him a brand new bike and helmet. Off we drove to the park closest to the house where I unloaded the bike and imparted upon him my considerable bike-related wisdom.



 

The problem was that he didn't listen to my instructions because he was very afraid of falling and when he doesn't listen I tend to get frustrated. I managed to calm down enough to let him know that even when I let go for a second or two that I was still going to hold on again and not let him fall. He was slightly better than when we began but is still far away from going solo. He's having difficulty understanding how to keep himself from leaning over.

 

The plan is that if the weather is nice again next weekend we'll go over to Riverside Park where I'll be able to rent a bicycle and let him see the old man in action and perhaps by observing he'll learn something. If I had the money I'd go out and buy a bike for me right now so that we could ride all the time. Of course I haven't ridden one in about twenty years so it's possible that when I write next week it'll be about my new bruises and abrasions. It is possible that it all could come back to me nicely but I'm not counting on it.

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

Yeah It's Christmas Time Again

Well it’s Christmas again. It’s a well-known fact that I’m not much for celebrating holidays and such. Right now at work they’ve been playing some abysmal Christmasy music over the loudspeaker which drives me crazy. I’m talking bland, elevator type of stuff with no vocals that just grates on my ears. It’s really the worst excuse for music ever invented and instead of putting me into a nice mood it pushes me in the opposite direction. Seriously, if I wasn’t able to listen to my IPod I’d probably end up going on a murderous rampage. Okay, I’m not serious and I don’t want to lose my job but you get my drift. It boggles my mind why they want to force this dreck on people.

Before I got married I never put up a Christmas tree nor did I decorate the house, more to the point I never decorated for any holiday. It’s just not my thing, I’m not into it. My wife, however, lives for this stuff so I indulge her and let her do what she wants so long as she leaves me out of it. My role is mainly to get things down from the attic and put them back up when she’s done with them. Other than that I’ll climb the ladder and put things up when she can’t do it but that’s about it. Of course our son gets into it, he is seven after all and yes I do love seeing his reaction when he opens his gifts.

I’m not a total Scrooge or anything. I do buy gifts and I don’t get upset (well not too much) when others can’t contain their upbeat spirits and go around wishing you a Merry Christmas. That’s alright, just don’t start waxing poetic on how much the holiday spirit means to you or you risk chunks being blown your way. Personally I am very hard to buy gifts for. Most of the things I’m interested in aren’t available at your local store. You can’t just bop out and pick something up. If it’s clothes I’m very finicky. The texture has to be right, I don’t like labels on them so, no v-necks, etc., etc., etc. Really I like plain, dark or earth tone colors but I have been trying to break out of that just a little.

Musically it’s extremely hard to know what I don’t have and would like since I get most of my stuff from smaller record labels/stores over the internet like Dirtnap or Razorcake. If it’s from a mainstream act or a large label you can generally count me out. My reading habits are quite eclectic as well so unless it’s a gift card for Powells or some like place you risk being disappointed in my reaction. At this point you might be saying “screw this guy, why should I want to get him anything?” and I can understand that but I can’t help the way I am. So deal with it.

My wife and I have learned that it’s better for us to get our own gifts or just tell each other outright what we want. It just makes sense to get somebody you love something that they actually want or like rather than something that you would like them to have. During my many years I’ve had far too many clothes sit in the bottom of my closet for a year or two before it’s okay to give them away than to ever want that again. It can be quite disappointing to receive something from family that you would never wear in a million years over and over and over.

Hey, at least look at it this way, Christmas is almost over so you won’t have to worry about reading something like this from me for another year. If you’re lucky that is, you never know when I’ll get the urge to write about anything. At least you’ve got that going for you, right? Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Bah Humbug.

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

Time Off From School

So my son is out of school today and tomorrow for Fall Break. Next month he's out for a week for Thanksgiving and then of course in December it's two weeks for Christmas and New Years. Man, kids today have got it made. I don't even remember if we got s Spring Break much less a Fall one.
So do kids have too little school, too much or just enough? Who knows? Who cares?

Ah well, at least it means I get to spend some time with him before I have to go to work. I need to squeeze some time in for the park or something else he'll like. Maybe some video games too, just for bonding though. Not because I like playing them or anything. It's just important for us to spend time together whatever we end up doing.

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

The Gift That Kept On Giving

Sometime around the third grade I received a GI Joe for Christmas. This wasn't the kind of small action figure that we have today, these were about a foot tall and came complete with the kung fu grip. I had no idea whatsoever what that meant but still it was a great selling point to a young person such as myself. I begged my mother endlessly for this particular GI Joe and for once it worked. My joy was endless, at least for a little while. After Christmas break was over we children returned to school and it was there that my teacher informed our class that we were to bring in our favorite gift that we had received for show and tell.


Of course there was no other toy for me to consider, the GI Joe was head and shoulders above anything else I had been given, so I informed my mother of my intention to take it to school and display it in all the glory that it was worthy of. Much to my dismay my mother had a completely different opinion than mine and told me quite clearly that the GI Joe had cost far too much money for me to risk taking it to school. It was forbidden. What if it were to get broken?

Even though I listened intently to what my mother had said the truth was that before she had even finished talking I had already resolved that I would take my GI Joe to show and tell no matter what. After all, hadn't my teacher instructed us to bring our favorite present? I couldn't ignore a directive like that from a teacher and then bring some lowly, lesser toy with me. It just couldn't be done that way. I went to my room and started plotting a course of action that would allow me to deviously sneak my prized gift out of the apartment.

As it turns out none of my careful planning was needed due to the fact that my mother left for work before I left for school. I merely had to take it with me. The moment had arrived and all of my class presented our offerings for inspection. There was a very good reaction to mine. So good in fact that a girl whose name escapes me (I've probably blocked it out) took it over to another part of the room and when she brought it back my mother's admonitions had born their hideous fruit. It was broken beyond repair as was my heart. Not only did I no longer have my favorite possession that I had long begged for but now I also had to look forward to the severe punishment that would no doubt be coming my way for disobeying my mother.

Once I was home I feverishly started looking for a hiding place, some secret spot where my mother would never find the broken GI Joe and thereby protect my posterior from having harm inflicted upon it. Keep in mind that I was young and so I chose the most unlikely spot that I would have been able to find something, under the gloves and scarves on the shelf in the hall closet. The very shelf that was almost eye level for my mother. The one that as it turned out was extremely easy for her to find what I had tried so hard to hide.


As you can imagine it didn't take her but a few moments to find it and summon me to stand before her in front of the closet. How is it that mothers have this ability to immediately discern that something is wrong in the house and sniff out exactly what it is? As she stood there shaking the broken GI Joe doll, ranting and raving at me for what I had done, what she had forbidden me to do, she lost all control and sharply smacked me on the top of the head with the doll. The impact shocked and probably scared me more than anything else. I stood there in shame and fear as the tears started to roll down my cheeks. My mothers reaction was not one of sorrow or remorse though. She immediately fell back on her tried and true go to saying, "Be quiet before I really give you something to cry about!"

Never in the history of the earth has that admonition worked on a child and it certainly didn't this time either. As if the physical pain that she had just inflicted upon me had not been enough to make me cry! It makes no sense at all but still parents use it to this day. Sadly I myself have used it a few times wincing inside after I've delivered it and realize what I have said. The rest of the evening was spent alone in my room alternately crying and plotting how I could make her pay for what she had done to me, which I of course was never able to do. Truthfully it was forgotten about after a few days and the natural order of things was restored.

Oddly enough this story would somewhat repeat itself years later (although accidentally) when she belted my nephew in the head with one of his action figures. That of course is another story saved for another time.

Published by Don Leach

Christmas and Heavy Metal....How Could Anything Go Wrong?

Here's a little something that combines Christmas, Heavy Metal and comedy which is the way I like it. Sure, you can have your stuffy Christmas music that bores you to tears or you can try something a little................different this year.