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My grandfather, nicknamed Popeye because of his huge forearms, was a wheeler dealer decades before Mike ran off Edd (allegedly). As a kid, he and I got up at the crack of dawn, and scoured the Southern California drive-in swap meets. The Paramount, the Roadium, were just two drive-in swap meets on our weekend circuit.
Back in 1999, right after our son Langston was born, something amazing happened. No, it wasn’t us realizing that being parents was the most important task of our lives. Or that children are outstanding learners, even when they’re babies. Nope, it was much more interesting than that.
Back in 1976, I used to beg my mom each morning to get me to school early, just so I could play an insane inner-city game called Suicide. I was 10 years old, and while the St. Anselm nuns copped a smoke next to the rectory, trying to steady their nerves for yet another day without debauchery*, 50 testosterone-filled boys gathered to throw a raggedy tennis ball against the church wall. The object of the game was simple. Catch the ball without fumbling or the mob pummeled you. It was the greatest
Why the hell do people buy old-ass cars from the 1960s? They cost too much, for one thing. They’re unreliable to operate as a daily, with their pesky two and four barrels. They stop like shit. And most of the time, they smell like a Shell station. Designed by guys who fought Hitler and Tojo with a half smoked Lucky Strike in the corners of their mouth, these automobiles do their damndest to proactively kill us with their oh-we-didn’t-know-that-crush-zones-were-a-thing-but-look-at-how-pretty-our-