I’ve done a lot of horrible things to nice people on April Fools Day (Fools’ Day? Fool’s Day? Foo’ls Day? Grammar. Jesus.) so I figured it was time to get myself good today: I recently found my 1989 diary from when I was 8 years old, and now you’re going to see it. Plus, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is currently tearing up the box office. Plus, I just had my birthday. Topical!
Now, for years, I called this my “Journal.” But let’s look at the cover.
No 8-year old kid keeps a journal with flowers all over it. They keep a diary. I might as well face it. Oh sure, I tried to butch it up with a hologram sticker of Bebop, and a stern warning of “Keep Out or Else,” but one can assume two things from looking at this cover: the “or else” means “…or else you will probably force-read my own diary aloud, while upper classmen run a viscous train on me”, and any 8-year old who can’t spell the word “Private” has no business making threats with a label gun on the cover of his tulip-covered diary. If you stumbled across this in a bush, next to a pair of bloody Fruit of the Looms and broken glasses, not even Nancy Grace would bat an eye. I’ve got it coming.
The inside-cover is a little heartbreaking. My mom gave this to me for my birthday, lovingly inscribed. At the time, I probably was angry I could not stick this book into a Nintendo and press start. But she was actually encouraging me to do something I now do (almost) for a living, which is really nice. The sad part is what follows: instead of “stories and thoughts,” we get “self-centered ramblings, ignorance, spite and hatred: 1989 style.” So, I think I probably let her down.
So let’s see what page 1 has to offer.
Hoo boy, “a birthday I won’t forget.” How’s that for suspense? My parents got us a basketball hoop for our driveway (excuse me, “a cort,” not to be confused with Bud Cort), probably to offset the disappointment of the rose-covered diary. It’s obvious I’m a genius writer from the start. Check this deft prose out: “I got a game.” Hey, that’s super! What kind of game? Was it a board game? A $50 Nintendo game, perhaps? A game of “let’s leave you in the woods?” Great descriptors, asshole. Way to think of your audience.
Now, to those of you who don’t know where I grew up, you might think “holy shit, you got a ROCKET JACKET?” but that’s not what you think it is.
Shown: Rocket Jacket I didn’t get.
The rocket jacket was a Rushville Rockets jacket, our school mascot. This set me on a course to become the actual “Rushville Rocket” years later, which was a big quilted thing that looked like a giant white dildo with fins. But that’s another story.
Shown: Zoom! The mascot of a school that fancies itself a “tough football town.” In fairness, we were called “The Fightin’ White Vibrators” up until the sexually repressed Reagan-era. Other places you may have seen our mascot: in a trucker’s glove box. In Richard Gere’s nightstand. Hidden in a 16-year old girl’s sock drawer as, you know, a “gag gift”.
I wish I could find the undoubtedly wacky “Chris Ward’s La Funnky Music 1 and 2″ on cassette. I mean, it’s not every day someone “tapes their own tape.” Man, wasn’t that a long time ago? I just DVD’d my own DVD today, so boy do I feel old!
“La Funnky Music” is just me rambling (as I believed a DJ would do) into a brown Fisher-Price recorder (again, like a real DJ), and then commercials I’d taped off television to hear later (just like you’d here on WKRB “The Buzz” Morning Zoo drive time). And I would listen to this on trips and in my own backyard. For hours. Apparently, the Bubble Tape commercial and Super Mario Bros. Super Show theme registered as “La Funnky Music” in my book.
ANYWAY, back to the dramatic story, which I’d like to set the scene for. My dad and I spent all day digging a post hole (maybe not all day. Everything takes “all day” when you’re 8), and assembling a basketball hoop (all day). The hoop is in place. The neighbors are watching out the window, because they now realize their life is about to change when every 5-10 seconds, an 8-year olds ball rolls into their well-kept-and-soon-to be-trampled, lawn. I am presented with a basketball, carefully wrapped. I go for my first lay up and a large man comes out of nowhere and BLOCKS THAT MOTHERFUCKER WITH ALL THE FURY A 40-YEAR OLD MAN CAN RAIN DOWN ON AN EIGHT YEAR OLD. This is Dean, my dad’s friend. He begins instantly apologizing for, you know, my head slamming against the concrete and stuff. And this wasn’t that pussy concrete people put down today. This was the real deal: cracks, rocks, weeds all stickin’ out and shit. “I got hurt bad” as I later recalled.
I mean “my stomace” hurt, man. Like, real bad. It was 8 in the evening when we got back. And that’s all we get. Was I okay? What did the x-rays show? Did anyone go to jail? Well, this was Rushville in 1989, so no one was going to jail for things yet. Even though Dean “stold the ball” from me, I don’t have any ill-will towards him today. He’s a pretty good guy. At least he didn’t yell “BOO-YAH!” which I might have done, were the tables turned.
So there you have it. This sets the stage for a series of blogs where reveal I am a limp-dick pansy. Entries that follow will include ex-girlfriends I call “pigs”, cats hit by drunk drivers and more secret crying.
Shown: Batman cake, UHF soundtrack, purple Rushville Rocket polo, child molester glasses, and a haircut that cordially invites you to kick my ass (please, RSVP).
[ONE LAST UPDATE]
This is how cool my mom is, even after reading this she found a picture of Rocky the Rocket. It’s not me in the costume, but there’s plenty of those somewhere.
Shown: Get it? “The Pits.” I used to help paint these for the football players to run through and destroy on game night. They were so appreciative, coaches like Randy Hawkins treated us with more respect because of our hard work. Just kidding, Randy Hawkins remained an asshole. And even though he died in a terrible tobacco spitting incident years ago, I stand by my recollection of him as a coach and mentor. The artist’s names are down the side, and it looks like Bryan Morrell had a hand in this potentially racially insensitive masterwork. I’m sure Bryan worked really, really hard on it. He loved football, and doing things to support the team.
It’s the moment nearly 20 of you have been waiting for…the winner to last Thursday’s first World of Ward Crap contest! The contest was easy, all you had to do was look at this honest-to-god cigarette lighter and tell me “Who is This For?” and you could win the box of crap I’m about to show you.
Your responses ranged from “hilarious” to “spam comment blocked,” and I thank everyone for participating. First, the Honorable Mentions!
Padre Hodges and Zoss were unfortunately disqualified because, while hilarious, the three of us have seen and done unspeakable things with shovels in the desert that have both bonded us for life and voided us from winning each other’s contests:
Padre Hodges said, and I can’t disagree with him:
Registered sex offenders who need a light?
Zoss had a very funny, very inventive twist on They Live:
It’s for Rowdy Roddy Piper. To us, it looks like a trashy novelty lighter, but it’s actually an incredibly sophisticated device that reveals a terrible secret. When Rowdy Roddy lights someone’s cigarette with it, he can tell if the smoker is actually a frog person disguised as a human. Marry and reproduce!
God I wish that were true, to justify the $0.69 I spent on it.
That’s probably more accurate than we know. Each one of these comments “tickled me” (as the kids say) in their own way…Jeff Sparkman’s blunt “it’s for mouthbreathing fuckshoes,” Denim’s conspiracy theory to confuse future generations how babies are born, NathanW’s feel-good White Trash Epic, Larry Joe’s very depressing tale of aging Midwestern woe, Ashley’s hipster potshot (zing! a pun!)
I had to narrow it down to my three favorites. Goof’s “your mom!” was a solid, classic use of the world’s best put-down, Jason Kinze’s way-too-true “for an 11 year old boy taking up arson as a hobby that hasn’t discovered internet porn yet.” and the WINNER…
POTATOJOE!
Who said…
A confused 78 year old man who thinks it’s an iphone
For the life of me, I can’t think of anything funnier than a man confusing a 69 cent pornographic lighter for the world’s most advanced phone. Great work, potatojoe. Very funny stuff.
“Hello? Grandson? I don’t know how to tell you this, because you’re so young. But…it’s cancer. It’s real bad. Tell your mother..OH GALWDDAMMIT! I HAVE BEEN TALKING INTO THAT KISSING LIGHTER AGAIN!!!”
And here are all the wonderful things Potatojoe wins that you won’t believe! Well, believe it…dreams can come true!
Halloween being my favorite holiday, and getting out of any and all learning activities a close second, you can imagine how I kicked myself when I forgot to dress up for Mrs. Fife’s drama class one morning in High School. The deal was, if you dressed up, you got to leave class and go show off your costume to the little kids. Everyone else got to stay behind and do assignments. Thinking I was sneaky, I got into the prop closet before class started and had my friend Bryan spray silver hair color all over my entire visible body.
And here’s how that conversation went:
TEACH: What the hell is this?
CHRIS: I’m the Silver Surfer!
TEACH: Tell me you didn’t use that hairspray color to do that
CHRIS: Yeah, you caught me, ha ha ha!
TEACH: Chris, you have to wash that off your skin.
CHRIS: Ok, I will, ha ha ha! Oh well, I tried! HA HA HA!
TEACH: No I’m serious…like right now. Any minute now your skin is going to stop breathing. You have to get that stuff off immediately.
If my face wasn’t doused in a thick chemical aerosol, you would have seen it go immediately pale when she said that. Try to imagine this being how you die: your pores were blocked by silver paint, your body stops getting oxygen, and you die on the floor of your drama class…and not even particularly well, since you suck at acting.
It literally took hours to get all this shit off my body. My skin was raw and bleeding. And when it rinsed off, the paint dripped all over my sensitive bunch. I’m talking real Tin Man’s balls here. But I missed most of the school day, which was kind of the point. And I got the shiny set of testicles I still sport today. What, do you think I washed them off? Dude…c’mon, chrome balls! I finally figured out how!
4. Hobo with Distended Ulcer
“Hi! I’m Apple Cheeks the Gainfully Employed Hobo! I gotta BIG CEE-GAR! I got me a Dick Tracy HAT! I’m a Lone Ranger memorabilia collector! Straight off the black gold, nuts in my hand, trustin no man, got my glock cocked, runnin this thing, ya understand ! AH CHA CHA!”
I think this picture ran in the paper. I have zero recollection of being this…whatever I am. The Green Hornet’s hayseed-in-the-city cousin? Jimmy Durante’s loser kid? I don’t know. If you know, then GIVE YOURSELF A GIANT CEE-GAR, KID! AH CHA CHA CHA! One thing’s for sure: there must have been a fire sale on Lone Ranger masks. Why does a Hobo need a Lone Ranger Mask? Why does the Pumpkin Girl in front of me? Was this some bizarre Kid Identity Protection clause at the newspaper? Or have you just wandered into a junior production of Eyes Wide Shut? I think this is right before I tricked Nicholas Cage into rescuing me, so we could put him in a giant Wicker Man. THE DRONE MUST DIE! THE DRONE MUST DIE!*
*middling reference to the 2006 Wicker Man remake, which I have just watched and feel I must immediately reference before my brain purges all memories of that movie from my cortex. Which happens right about….now.
3. Anton Chigurh
Left: Mugshot of Death Cab for Cutie keyboardist after some hostile snicker-snag with unruly fangirl. Right: Oscar-Winning badass.
Guess how many Halloween bar-patrons have heard of the 2007 Best Picture “No Country For Old Men,” and Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, most iconic screen villain in recent years? The answer is zero. Or, to be more exact…
….how many Halloween bar patrons, after several beers, could recognize a walking broomstick of a man holding a painted garden sprayer with a Prince Valiant shag as the most terrifying film villain of our time? The answer to THAT…is also zero. I was so in love with Anton Chigurh that year, that I was blinded by the fact that you should never, ever go as a person for Halloween. And without the larger-than-life screen personality, eyes that could stop a man’s heart, or blood curdling voice, that’s essentially what I went as that year: a person. Jesus, THIS guy looks more like Anton Chigurh, and was better received at the bar:
I guess I figured people would say, “Who are you?” and I would say “Anton Chigurh, friendo!” and they would laugh and laaaaaugh and say, “I love that Oscar winning movie!” and I would flip one of the many quarters I was carrying around in my pocket that night and say “CALL IT, FRIENDO!” and they would say, “Oh no! ha ha ha. Don’t do it!” and I would squirt them in the forehead with my water-spraying, fake oxygen tank thing.
What actually happened is I just wandered around trying to keep an unapproachable look on my face, as everyone’s eyes darted in the opposite direction. I probably just looked like a retarded, angry landscaper.
So never go as another actor for Halloween. Unless you were horribly disfigured in a police accident, then you can go as Fred Krueger: Motivational Speaker
The next rule is, when all else fails, go as Gallagher, like my friend Sarah did. As in, “Who’s that cool Gallagher chick hanging around with that denim-loving ass-gardener?”
Pictured: Not at all a terrifying moment.
2. Every Clown My Parents Forced Me To Be
You see that mouth hanging open? That is the face of a brainless, mouth-breathing baby. That’s me. I’m that stupid baby. You know what I’m probably thinking right there? I’m probably thinking about eating my sock, or digging my fist into my own eye. That’s because babies are ridiculously, hilariously stupid creatures. Because they’re stupid and can’t make their own decisions, their parents decide what they are for Halloween until the child is cognizant enough to point at the TV and say “Mider-Man.” (that’s Spider-Man. That’s how I said it, and that’s how I got my first vinyl Spider-Man costume).
But until that time, my parents made me a clown. Year after yarn-brained year. And you can see, after half a decade of this, just how excited I was about it…
Pictured: From the photo series “Bad child gets what it deserves” or, alternately, “Purple clown placed in hot sun.”
Yes, I never got tired of this crap. I believe I allowed my face to be painted in this picture in exchange for a balloon and an A-Team shirt. Absolutely no dignity.
That’s also why, to this day, I believe I see a midnight visitor whenever I look out my bedroom window. Someday, my kids will too.
1. A. GOD. DAMN. CABBAGE. PATCH. DOLL.
When I was digging for these old costumes, this picture hit me like a pink nightmare. What. The. Hell. Was. This.
To be blunt—to be absolutely, frank, really—“Holy tits, why was I dressed like a fucking Cabbage Patch Doll?!??!” was one question that breezed through my mind. Again, I have zero recollection of this. I sincerely hope that thing hanging around my neck is a pacifier, and not a “plug” of some sort. Mom explains that this costume was thrust upon me, again, by my Aunt who hates little boy cousins, but enjoys little girl nieces.
There must be a big metal bin in most minimum security sex offender prisons where the mail sorters throw contraband pictures that come addressed to inmates. Near that metal bin must be a smaller, pink basket wear the guards throw only the most twisted and mind-shattering of incoming inmate mail. Alone, this picture would occupy that pink basket. Surely, this is the only reason I can think of for a picture like this to exist: be be mailed to a convicted pederast, or to bait one into appearing on Dateline.
Cabbage Patch related side-story: Kids of all sexes in my town went ape-shit for Cabbage Patch Dolls, like the rest of the country, in the early eighties. My small, backwater town was ill-prepared for this demand, but managed to get some dolls in that sold out instantly. And yet, somehow, my mom got my brother and I a Cabbage Patch Doll that just wasn’t selling in my tiny, values-driven Illinois town. No one had even touched it. I couldn’t believe our luck. My brother and I loved running through the yard with that thing, clutching our blankets. It wasn’t until years later that we figured out the reason my mom got her hands on it: it was a BLACK Cabbage Patch doll, and no other moms in town wanted it. Wow. Just….wow.
So, yeah, our family was ahead of the curve on human/doll race-relations.
The background of this terrifying picture is, of course, the popular Halloween posing spot in my house, as seen in “Skateboard Frankenstein,” so we’ve come full circle. I hope you’ve enjoyed a look at my most tragic Halloweens to date. Lord knows I’m now dead inside.
Christmas can go swallow a whole bottle of Flintstones vitamins and die on the way to the hospital as far as I’m concerned. Halloween is where it’s at. I’m working really hard this year on another boss costume to top last year’s Care Bear costume, an idea I BLATANTLY STOLE from Rickey Purdin and James Walker. And I got away with it, because I moved 1000 miles away and no one’s heard of Rickey and James west of Cincinnati:
Shown: Me as Care Bear and unnamed, sober woman I may or may not work with
But my ideas, stolen or not, haven’t always been on the mark. Here are the first 5 of the Worst Halloween Costumes I’ve Ever Worn (Look for the rest as the week goes on!!!!)
10. Skateboarding Frankenstein
Old school Nash skateboard? Pretty cool. Homemade paper mache Frankenstein head? Quite a feat of my mom and I. But combine the two, and I look like a Ralston Cereal Mascot reject: “Frank N. Boarder! Part of your complete breakfast, dudes!” And what’s with my neck bolts being in my forehead? If this rang my doorbell, I’d kick it in the nuts just on principal.
9.Teen Wolf
The guy in the middle? He’s the winner of the Jack and Jill Grocery Store costume contest. That’s because he looks like what he’s supposed to be. My cousin Jarrod on the left there, even he looks like a parrot. I’m supposed to be Teen Wolf. Here’s a quick comparison:
There’s no mistaking the picture on the left as Michael J. Fox as the beloved 80s icon, Teen Wolf. And there’s no mistaking the picture on the right for, what appears to be, a bear cub with Barry Gibb’s pubes glued around it’s entire head, wearing a flannel shirt. Needless to say, I didn’t win the Jack and Jill Grocery Store costume contest.
Name dropping side-story: When I worked at Wizard Magazine, I used to have to interview writer Jeph Loeb all the time. Then, one day, someone revealed to me that he wrote the Teen Wolf movie AND Commando! “Teen Wolf bought my first house,” he told me. I was floored. From that point on, and to this day, all I want to really talk about with Jeph Loeb is Teen Wolf. I don’t give a shit about how he and artist Tim Sale interact, I don’t care about what’s going on with Lost or whatever he’s producing these days….I want to hear goddamned Teen Wolf stories. I could not get enough of them, and took every opportunity to try to get one more out of him.
8. Jaws from Jaws IV
We got a lot of use out of this costume, which my mom made from those cool patterns they used to sell at Wal-Mart, housed in big filing cabinets, before Wal-Mart said “aww, fuck it” and started selling the same five “slutty nurse” costumes for $40 apiece. If I was 10 years old in 2009, I’d probably be a slutty nurse this year. There’s, like, no other choice.
Between me, my brother and my cousin I think, we got a lot of laughs from relatives who thought we were the SNL “Landshark” from year to year. Not exactly the vision of Dreyfuss-eating terror I was hoping to inspire. What you’re not seeing is a view from the front, where my face is painted black in the shark’s gaping mouth. Probably because I don’t want a more pictures of myself in Blackface all over the internet. Hey, I don’t need THAT public relations headache again, am I right!?!
But, hey, I thought I looked like Jaws. The rest of the neighborhood probably thought I was going as “An Orca eating Al Jolson,” but that’s neither here nor there.
7. Sad Vampire
This was another case of me being way ahead of my time. Today, sad vampires are all the rave, and adorable little Hulk Hogan costumes would just be too tasteless to imagine in light of the Hulkster’s divorce scandal, son-killing-a-kid-with-his-car scandal, daughter-being-a-talentless-whore scandal, and transvestite wife scandal.
I think that Hulkster is this guy Beau Thomas, I can’t remember. Though, I do remember being really jealous of his costume, and really feeling like I had phoned it in with a common vampire get-up that year.
“Stupid, SO STUPID!! You’ll never win the Jack and Jill Grocery Store contest with this bushleague vampire horseshit!!! Another year wasted!!!!,” I might be heard to say, alone in my room, slamming blocks and grinding potato chips into the carpet.
6. Michael Keaton’s Batman
I feel really bad about putting this on the list, because I think I gave my mom a really hard time about it, and she probably looked really hard for a good Batman costume.
I was in fourth grade, and Batman: The Motion Picture WAS MY EFFING WORLD. And evvvvery last sumbitch was going as Batman that year, and we knew we were going to have to top each other. I know it’s around somewhere, but I can’t find classmate Ryan Heinz’s superior Batman costume. I believe he held me down that year, and made it quite clear that HE WASN’T THE ONE WEARING HOCKEY PANTS!!!! I conceded his point.
Mine had ears that wouldn’t stand up, and a Lone Ranger mask sewn into it. Looking back, there’s probably nothing that could have met my expectations of a Batman the Movie costume short of Kevlar body armor with pre-molded nipples. But they weren’t selling that at Walgreens that year: they were selling this. And here I am, trying as I might to re-create the “terrify criminals with my cape extension trick” scene from the first 15 minutes of the movie. Just sad, really.
I lost whatever contest was going on, and Ryan Heinz went on to be the coolest man to ever live.
Shown: Redefining the shit-eating grin, Batman showoff Ryan Heinz
TOMORROW: THE REST OF THE WORST!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
