The Sunnyside

2002-09-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

Johnny-co. That was his name. I, however, after five minutes of listening to him speak, dubbed him Johnny-gets-it-in-the-ass. He was the head camp instructor type. His responsibilities consisted mainly of walking around and telling his airhead undergrad volunteers what to do. Not that any of them listened.

I don't remember the camp's official name. For the purposes of this blog it is camp "Happy Fucking Place" because that's what I was calling it by the end. Too much smiling just pisses me off. And all those assholes did was smile. But let me check myself - perhaps I'm exaggerating. I did come away with some positive memories. For instance, my father. He came along as a volunteer chaperone. My dad is a funny guy. Everyone to him is a knucklehead. Except the people at the DMV, they’re bitches. We had fun canoeing in the piss pond they called a pristine lake. What a bunch of jerks. I say this in retrospect. At the time it was just maddening because we spent the first thirty minutes five feet from the shore shouting, “row, you fool!”

Bunk life was limited but entertaining. All the guys slept in one long cabin and all the girls in another. Showers were limited to three minutes and because of this the cabin smelled really, really bad. Evening banter was highly obscene. 12-year-olds get a big kick out of saying “fuck” when they know that nobody cares. Nobody slept. My best friend Sean tried though. He failed. But he tried. On his first attempt he woke up twenty minutes into his slumber and screamed, “invasion!” at the top of his lungs and threw his pillow into the air. He has yet to live the incident down.

2002-07-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

My elementary school, Pachappa, was just about four blocks away. Of the many lingering memories I have, that of our mascot, the God damn goofy assed Tiger from hell, is the most useless. Every month teachers nominated students for awards. We were known as "P.A.W.S" (Pachappa's Award Winning Students), which tied it in with the Tiger theme. Of all the symbols of the idiocy of the program I think that acronym is the worst. To make things even worse, I was present at it's creation. September of my Kindergarten year we voted on the name. Of course, those bastards fooled us into thinking our vote mattered. It was really decided by an oligarchy headed by the principal, Mrs. Parker-Lawerence. I think she may have been a lesbian. Looking back I wonder about a lot of things.

Playground politics are fairly complex. At our school, playground dominance never stayed in one place for long. Sometimes it was the "smart kids" who were in charge. Other times it was the mini-gang-bangers who ran the sandbox. Whatever the case, Darwin would be extremely entertained.

The schoolyard was a brutal place. The kids were mean, stupid and rather depressing all around. Most of them are still this way. It's a fact. Over the years I've bumped into some of them and then wished I hadn't. It sends me on a ego-trip when I see how f(*&(*d up they are. Some them are flunking out of high school. Others are pot heads. Some are convicted criminals and a couple are dead. Only a few are doing OK. One of them is a fat kid by the name of Zachary. Firstly, he's no longer fat. He's lost about 100 pounds and is swimming for the high school team across town. He's an honors student and seems to be pretty well-respected by his teachers and peers. That's the only person who comes to mind that hasn't gone down the crapper.

In general I stayed out of trouble. One reason for this was the threat of "cruel and unusual punishment." One teacher, who shall remain nameless, made kids stand for the entire recess hugging a poll. This doesn't sound bad, but if you've ever experienced Southern California heat you know how awful it can be. The pole would be damn hot and you had to keep your hands on it the entire time. The teacher who used this punishment was actually a pretty good guy. He hosted chess tournaments in his classroom that became fairly popular. But that pole hugging crap was not something I enjoyed.

The teachers at Pachappa were off. When I say "off" what I mean is "off their damn rocker". My second grade teacher would throw a screaming fit every time she read the sub-report from the previous day. My pal Sean once had to write the same sentence 1000 times for talking during class under substitute supervision. His finger is permanently deformed. To this day he can't write with a pencil for more than a few minutes.

My 6th grade class was a quirky ensemble. All of our odd personalities came together to make 6th grade Science Camp one of the most interesting experiences of my life.

2002-07-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

By the way, if anyone attempts to use this material in their own stories, I'll sue the shit out of you. This is good raw material for a novel and I have rights to it. It was my damn life and now it's my damn story. If I see a novel sitting in the fiction section of Barnes and Noble before I die without my name on it, I'll sue the shit out of whoever wrote it. If I see a movie that uses any of the situations described in this weblog, I'll sue the shit out of whoever wrote it. If I read a short story somewhere that reminds me of this stuff, I'll sue whoever wrote it. So just don't take my material - because I'll find you and then I'll bankrupt you. Enjoy.

2002-07-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

My family lived in a very old house. It couldn’t have been built any later than 1927. Once I found a “Kill the Japs” etching in the garage with the date December 8, 1941 scratched underneath. I suppose I should have notified a museum or something.

The house was completely covered in hardwood floors. Not the modern kind that look like they have a layer of plastic. The old kind. The kind that gives you splinters if you’re not careful. Every wall looked like it was about to give. My mother did a wonderful job of decorating though. She picked a unusually soothing color yellow that complemented the exterior paint, which was a bright yellow very nicely. Now don’t get me wrong because I know you’re thinking, “Yellow? How awful!” But the truth is yellow doesn’t look so bad when the paint is crumbling and the trim is dull white. It just looks old.

The roof was constantly leaking. Whenever it rained the fireplace flooded and we had to stop it up with whatever was handy. Occasionally our stupid dog would be lying in the paths of the tiny streams and spare us the inconvenience of having to plug them up. She was a good dog – blind – but good.

The backyard was massive as I remember it. The dominant feature was our detached garage. When inside you could observe the rest of the yard through a window. Which, of course, I broke at least once a year. My dad kept a weight bench inside which he used regularly. I used to sit in there and watch him lift, if only to get a laugh when a rat fell from the rafters and scared the shit out of both of us.

Besides the garage there was a tree in the center of the dirt (there wasn’t a blade of grass). It was a tall tree. I don’t recall what kind because frankly I never knew. I do recall that we hung a rope from it that was our swing once we outgrew the aluminum swing-set our parents bought us for Christmas one year. If my dad ever pushed us back and forth (which we begged him to do) you could swing so high that your body was actually higher than the branch to which the rope was attached. I guess we could have died had we fallen off. That rope stayed there until my cousin, Christopher, broke it one year. Poor kid was swinging without a care in the world when the damn rope snapped. Just like that. Chris fell right on his ass and looked up, shocked. I guess when you're fifteen you shouldn’t swing on ropes that are meant for 6-year-olds.

There was another tree. This one was famous for many blocks around. It was famous because it didn’t grow up. It grew sideways. What’s more, it wasn’t just some skinny tree. It was a big eucalyptus tree with a trunk as thick as a Suburban. Every kid in our neighborhood knew about that tree. Whenever people moved into the renter next door they were sorely disappointed to learn that it was my tree. Every so often some jackass insisted that it was his tree. I would then have to engage him in a long and costly War of the Tree. I was commander-in-chief in about 152 Wars of the Tree (rebellions and all).

Our neighbors were strange people. The most interesting people on the block always lived next door to us because the house was a renter. Every 2-3 years a new family would move in. We had everything from drug-dealers to wife-beaters to abusive alcoholics. They were a fun bunch. I was always well-informed on the latest crisis next door because I could here them yelling at each other through my bedroom window.

My greatest companions on that street were my dogs (save my best friend Sean, who us usually busy with his own problems about three blocks away). Over the years I had many dogs. The first was Annie, a decrepit cocker spaniel who at the time of her death was both blind and deaf. After Annie was Susie. Susie was a wonder of a dog. Visitors were scared of her because she liked to smile at them. Her smile looked like a snarl to everyone except my family. Whenever she managed to push her way through the wooden fence that separates the front yard from the backyard she would just sit on the front porch and wait for us to get home. As far as we know, that is. Unfortunately one day a lightning storm scared her off and we never saw her again.

Following Susie was a series of mutts and pound-hounds that never quite fit. They either died or ran off before we grew attached to them. Then there was Butch. Butch is (he’s still alive) a bear of a dog. He’s Labrador with a little bit of Chow. For the most part he’s a passive dog. You can give him immense joy just by looking at him. I made the mistake of teaching him to shake so now whenever you approach him he sticks his paw in your lap. Butch entertained himself by sitting on the patio with his mouth closed and the tip of his tongue peeping out from between his lips. After we bought Isabel (a pit bull) and Buster (another pit bull) Butch’s authority over the backyard entered a steep decline. He never regained his position of power again. He is now happily retired and living with Sean in Hemet, California.

His successors were Isabel and Buster. Isabel was stocky and fat, built very much like a tank. She wouldn’t dare hurt a human being – small animals, on the other hand, were fair game as far as she was concerned. She nearly ate our two rabbits, who were saved by Yours Truly and my lightning fast reflexes. She was outright gentle with little kids, though. Whenever the neighbors brought over their little toddler Sophia to play, Isabel would sit vigilantly watching over her. Maybe she was just sizing up the meal. We’ll never know.

Buster was a horny little son-of-bitch. The Casanova of the canine world. He was big, lean and… a big softy. He was Isabel’s bitch (as ironic as that is). The breeder who sold him to us asked us to stud the him out. We did. He asked us to let him show Buster in shows (we did). Now Buster is a doggie celebrity. He graces the pages of many of the leading pit bull calendars and is a Grand Champion of dog shows. The damn dog is a celebrity. Figures.

Now that you know so much about my God damn pets you should have a pretty good idea about how pathetic my life on Sunnyside was. I knew more about the intrigues of the dogs than the people who owned them. I maintain to this day that the dogs were smarter. They didn’t bull shit each other.

2002-07-25T23:37:00.000-07:00

It’s my opinion that suburbia is hell. I’d rather live in downtown Beirut than any God damn miserable town in Southern California. If any place is the opposite of epic, believe me, it’s a piece of crap place called Riverside.

Riverside is home to the Almosts. The Almosts are a particular breed of people who are doomed to be nothing more than the equivalent of Lithuania at the Olympics. Sure it’s there, but that’s all. If they actually do win something everyone will just go, “Well Lithuania finally won something.” and then go on with their day.

I used to live on a street called Sunnyside. It's a deceitful little bastard of a street. It fools you into thinking it’s quiet and happy and all that crap. But stand there for a minute and you’ll see the truth. Don’t walk because you’ll miss something. Just stand there and look about. You’ll see the speed bumps in the middle of the road that we had to beg the city for. My brother and I were nearly killed on numerous occasions by some son-of-a-bitch in a convertible late for his 5 o’ Clock.

Keep looking and you’ll see the Circle K quickie mart on the corner. It was held up a bunch of times. I was never lucky enough to be there when it happened, even though I was in there at least once a day buying something to ruin my appetite. They sold big gulps for 79 cents that could drown the entire population of Zimbabwe. Now it’s an “AK Mart,” which I have lovingly dubbed “AK-47 Mart” because the regular clerk looks just like Osama Bin-Laden.

Besides the quickie mart we had the Riverside Plaza which has since closed down. That piece of crap mall became deserted just when I was old enough to convince my mom to let me walk there by myself. I could have ridden my bike through the whole damn thing without being questioned. I should have. I tell people I did.