Top Nine Topics of Suburban Nextdoor Posts

These are all first world problems, people.  Overall, life is pretty good in a big city suburban bubble.

1. Complaints about kids driving golf carts*
2. Complaints about HOA fees going up (which will always include several snarky people reminding the OP that A. the HOA board is comprised of neighbors and B. is available to join during elections)
3. Complaints about teenagers driving too fast*
4. Questions about random police activity (e.g. anyone know what's going on in the Target parking lot?)
5. Questions about what's getting built at the corner of some random intersection
6. Complaints about a contracted service (e.g. sprinkler repair, lawn care, handyman)
7. Rave reviews about a local restaurant that is probably way too far from where you live to be a feasible option (better yet: the rave review is weirdly useless because it's promoting a well-known restaurant the community already knows is great)
8. Complaints about the local city council and/or mayor
9. Reports on wild animal sightings in the neighborhood

* Bonus points if the post also features a blurry smartphone photo of the offending kid/teen.

And consider this a public service announcement... if you don't have something informative and useful to contribute to a Nextdoor discussion, don't engage.  No one wants to read your lame dad jokes ("probably building another car wash! lol"), your condescending attitude to the OP's question ("the police are probably there to investigate a crime"), or your pathetic attempt to spin a harmless post into a political op-ed piece ("don't California our Texas").  Everyone hates you.

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Starlight Rollercade Memories

We were amazed that Google image search dug up this image of the dearly departed Starlight Rollercade that resided on a stretch of Harry Hines Boulevard that was already pretty seedy in the early 1980s.  Judging by the pristine look of the building and the fins on the cars in the parking lot, this photo looks like it came from an advertisement postcard from the 1960s.  But we remember well those glass doors leading to the cashier alcove - that entrance remained wholly unchanged through the early 1980s.

The Cheese Fry didn't spend a lot of time at Starlight, which is probably what made a trip there so special.  A few birthday parties, some church youth group excursions, an end-of-sixth-grade celebration.  Going there was an event, people.  The smelly, unnaturally heavy rental skates.  The dark and dank vibe in the concourse around the edge of the rink, contrasted by the harsh fluorescents of the in-house pizza joint.  The feel of rolling off the sluggish worn-out carpet and onto the fast and shiny wooden rink floor. 

But the reason we even came up with this blog post subject was the music, played by an actual deejay (likely spinning actual records in dual turntables) from a far corner of the rink, sitting up high like a judge presiding over a courtroom of pre-teen, PG-rated fun.

To this day, we cannot hear these songs without being transported to the twinkling disco ball flashes of the Starlight Rollercade and those exhilarating moments of skating so fast that the wind whipped our hair, trying hard to look cool as we struggled desperately to not wipe out.

"Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder (1983)
"Driving My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbit (1980)
"Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant (1982)
"Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc. (1979)
"Magic" by Olivia Newton-John (1980)
"Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton (1983)

There's a roller rink still in operation in a suburb not too far from here.  It's the only one know of - and for a few years there, it was a popular destination for our kids' friends' birthday parties.  Going there was fascinating because it reminded us of Starlight in so many ways, but at the same time it was also so very different.  Like a sort of funhouse mirror version of the roller rink of our youth -- too clean, too bright, too new.  And they didn't play any early-1980s music.

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12 Observations from a 14-Year-Old's Club Soccer Game

1. Portable camp chairs are everything.  Some city soccer fields provide aluminum bleachers, but it's never guaranteed.  You can go with the basic Walmart model with four legs and two arms - the cup holders will cost more - or upgrade to the high-end "look at me!" models with pneumatic piston rockers and/or built-in adjustable shade awnings.
2. There's always the one parent who's way too aggressive with the cheering, whether it's arguing with the ref ("Call it both ways!"), criticizing his kid's play ("Come on, move to the ball!"), or demanding cut-throat intensity even if your team is blowing out the opponent ("Keep the pressure up!").
3. You really cannot tell how good a team will be just by looking at them warm up.  Scrawny kids who look like pushovers can be crazy fast and agile, tall girls that look formidable can be clueless on offense.
4. Don't ask us to explain the offsides rule.
5. Soccer weather can be extreme.  We've watched just as many games on freezing cold mornings wrapped in multiple layers as we have on broiling hot summer afternoons with our chairs strategically positioned in the slender shadow of a field light pole.
6. Right or wrong, if a parent can speak Spanish we will assume they know way more about soccer than we do.
7. Thankfully, youth soccer doesn't entertain that ridiculous "extra minutes" nonsense.
8. Good luck parking on tournament days.  If it's not mud fields, it's mud fields with gravel.  The trick is to show up during the "shift change" when the earlier block of games is ending thereby allowing you to stalk the folks shuffling out to their cars carrying armfuls of camp chairs or dragging those game-day wagons.
9. Surprisingly, many of these giant soccer complexes just didn't have enough money in their budgets to create signage.  And so you're creeping along in your car squinting through binoculars like GI Joe on a secret mission trying to read the tiny, faded 8-1/2 x 11 sized metal signs that are cable-tied to the goals facing the wrong direction.  "Is that a 3 or a 4?" "If that's a 6, where the hell is 7?"
10. Parents, stick to your side of the field.  Look for your kids' bench and place your chairs opposite that bench.  And leave a nice 10-yard buffer zone at midfield.  It's not that hard.  We don't want to hear your cheering for your kids or complaining about ours.
11. It's always a weird "Twilight Zone" moment when you realize there's a player on the other team with the same name as your kid.
12. Inevitably, you will believe with absolutely certainty that the refs are making more calls against you than the other team.  Guess what?  The parents on the other side feel exactly the same.

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Notes from a "Wheel of Fortune" Taping

If there is a club for game show geeks who have attended a taping of the Big Three, we are in that.  We attended a "Price is Right" taping in the final weeks of Bob Barker's reign back in the mid-2000s and shortly thereafter, we attended a taping of "Jeopardy" when Alex Trebek was the host.  On our recent trip to Los Angeles this spring, we got tickets to "Wheel of Fortune."  We're definitely more hardcore "Price Is Right" and "Jeopardy" fans, but one cannot deny the longevity and appeal of "Wheel of Fortune."

1. This was what we were most excited about... when the contestants glance off camera during the game, what exactly are they looking at?  Well, there's two giant flatscreen TVs on the wall just to the left of the puzzle board.  On the top vertical screen, all three contestants are listed by their corresponding wheel "pointer" color.  This tracks their cumulative winnings throughout the game, plus also the money they have in the bank during the current game.  The bottom horizontal flatscreen provides a list of all the available letters.  When someone calls a "C," for example, then that letter disappears off the list.  Vowels are grouped together below the consonants.  That bottom screen also reminds the contestants of the puzzle category.  "What Are You Doing?" seems to be pretty popular right now.  
2. So during the game if someone flubs a line or there's a technical problem, after the episode ends, they'll go back and do retakes as if it were a scripted show.  That was a big surprise to us.  There was a microphone problem when Ryan Seacrest hugged a contestant goodbye, so the two of them had to totally recreate that spontaneous moment for a retake.  The best moment came when there was a problem with the overhead shot of the wheel (should that be capitalized Wheel?) when it landed on a specific wedge.  After the episode ended, the prop guy - there is apparently one guy who is charge of the wheel - had to spin the wheel just right so that it would land on that specific wedge for the camera.  It took him about eight tries to nail it.  The audience cheered.
3. They do pipe in the sound effects you hear on the show, like the slide whistle bankrupt sound and the "doo-doo-do-do" chimes for a new puzzle.
4. No, the audience doesn't shout "Wheel!... of!... Fortune!..."  That's recorded.
5. We saw three episodes taped.  Each one took about an hour.  Not just for the redos, but there's also a lot of adjustments to be made to the wheel - replacing the prize amount wedges - during the commercial breaks.  The biggest delay came when a flashing plastic wedge wasn't flashing.  They had to take it apart and repair some wiring.  Also fun was to watch the one guy whose sole job during the breaks was to come wipe down the padded vinyl contestant railing.  He did it every time.
6. There's apparently a very active alumni group of past contestants who seem pretty obsessed with the show and also very impressed that they were on it.  We stood in line with a couple of them and then later had the misfortune of sitting behind them in the bleachers.  They were shameless in making sure everyone around knew they'd been on the show.  One of them even wore her game day name badge.  "Look at me!"  It might be interesting to talk to a contestant, but not these obnoxious characters.  They were pretty loud and abrasive in the bleachers, almost acting like they were special guests - the stage manager had to ask them to knock it off at one point.  There are no repeat contestants (we think), so these two are essentially milking a single 30-minute appearance.
7. Before each game, the contestants all shoot short promos for their hometown station.  That's when we were reminded by the stage director that it's "Wheel of Fortune" not "The Wheel of Fortune."
8. We can't be 100% sure, but there was a stagehand near our section of the bleachers holding up laminated sheets for Ryan.  We think this was to help cue him which contestant was due to spin next so he doesn't have to keep track of that.
9. Vanna came out and talked to the audience, of course.  She told us that she's worn thousand of outfits over the years, but never the same thing twice.  They're all loaners from designers.  Vanna does repeat the shoes, though.
10. Apparently, they're looser with solving the puzzle these days.  Seems like in the Pat era you had one shot and God forbid if you fumbled your words.  But now you have a set amount of time to solve, phrasing and rephrasing as needed until time runs out.  But that timer failed on one of the puzzles we saw, so they threw that whole puzzle out and did that segment over again with a new one.
11. There's a whole other set-up during the final prize puzzle what with that little prize wheel.  It gets wheeled out from backstage on a special cart and three guys then slide it into position next to the larger wheel.  After the show is over, they load it back into the cart - securing it with several bolts - and wheel it backstage.
12. The stage is pretty wide but not very deep.  In that familiar wide shot you see of Vanna standing at the puzzle board, there's about three cameras crammed together just out of the shot to the left, all pointing at the contestants.  They've framed it perfectly.  One inch to the left and you'd see them all.
13. Vanna no longer has to even touch the puzzle board.  Apparently, there are lasers that sense her hand and reveal the letters.
14. It may be blasphemous, but we think Ryan is better at this than Pat Sajak.  He's smoother and more genuine.  Pat could sometimes seem a little above all of that gameplay nonsense.  Like he just sort of tolerated all of this.
15. The show can control the height of the riser the contestants stand on - if you're too short to reach over that railing (sanitized during every commerical break!) to spin the wheel, they'll lift the platform for you.
16. If you're in the audience, you're doing a lot of clapping.  We never noticed this watching the show, but you clap when the contestants spin, you clap when they get a letter, you clap when they solve.  The show told everyone that when Vanna claps, you clap.  Plus there's one of those old-school flashing "Applause" signs hanging over the bleachers.
17. As you might imagine, there's a camera on a ceiling mount pointing down at the wheel.  Pretty cool.
18. At no time did the wheel spin by itself.  Those "beauty shots" (as they call them) of the spinning wheel was initiated with a hard yank by that prop guy in charge of the wheel.  By the way, unlike "The Price Is Right" there is no penalty for not spinning the wheel all the way around.

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Ranking Wait Lines at the Airport

In order of increasing irritation and aggravation --

6. The line to board the plane, part one - At least at the gate you have room to sort of stretch out on on those fake leather chairs, charge your phone if you're lucky to find a working outlet, grab some overpriced food and drink, ignore the background noise of whatever toothless pseudo-news program is running in the background (even vanilla-flavored CNN seems to trigger certain folks), and study the strange assortment of people walking by in all kinds of clothing, hairdos, ages, and body types.  It can be a long wait, but at least you have amenities.
5. The line to check your bags - Like so many businesses now, customers are asked to do extra work that used to be handled by airline employees.  And so we dutifully use kiosk touchscreens to print boarding passes and luggage tags.  This free labor, of course, provides no cost savings.  The good news is that this line usually moves pretty quick, both at the kiosks and then also dropping off your bag at the counter.  We imagine this step will soon be eliminated somehow and we'll end up being the ones to toss our bags onto that conveyor belt.  What service do those clerks provide other than asking about lithium batteries? 
4. The TSA security line, part one - These lines to confirm your identity to bored TSA agents (digression: notice how suddenly they're taking your picture now? a very sly, quiet further eroding of our privacy) are extremely long and snake around like you're about to get on a Disneyland ride.  Thankfully, most of the time these lines move much faster than they look.  Most of the time.
3. The line to board the plane, part two - Showing your boarding pass goes pretty quick with the agent at the gate, but then you hit the rush hour traffic jam of the jetway as people you can't see are undoubtedly up there in the plane moving like blind, slothful turtles as they creep along the aisle, wedging their enormous bags into the overhead bins, then hunting for their seat.  It's a jarring transition from the spacious comfort of the gate seating area.  If we ruled the world, we would 100% ban all carry-ons that won't fit under the seat in front of you.  No joke - we'd rip those overhead bins right out.  They're a cancer.  If you're one of those annoying people who insist on wasting everyone's time cramming a too-big suitcase into the overhead bin, you are part of our national nightmare.  Do better.  Check your bag like a civilized human.

2. The TSA security line, part two - Aside from our old man gripe that most of this is just empty theater to make everyone feel safer, the main irritation here is that every airport seems to have different rules.  Shoes on or off?  Laptop in or our?  Out bag goes on the belt or in a tray?  Does the TSA even realize they there's no uniformity?  Sometimes they seem annoyed that you're confused.  Bonus points for the glassy-eyed TSA agents who don't even really try to communicate what we need to know because they're just muttering their canned lines over and over like a robot slowly dying inside.
1. The line to get off the plane - You're tired and grumpy, shoehorned into that tiny little seat.  You're ready to go.  But instead, you're stuck for what seems like an eternity, staring into oblivion as dozens of rows of people in front of you move in super-slow motion to deplane.  Zero urgency.  What's most frustrating is the time it takes to actually see something, anything happening in those first few rows.  Again, the biggest culprit involves having to reclaim the overhead bin suitcases.  Cancer.

For more fun Cheese Fry rants about air travel, check out this 2016 post.

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Fourteen Observations from a Club Volleyball Tournament

1. There's something overwhelming when you first arrive at a club volleyball tournament in the morning before any games have started.  Dozens of courts - and if you're at a big tournament in a convention center, if could be well over a hundred courts - filled wall to wall with players warming up.  As far as the eye can see, there are balls popping into the air.
2. We regret to inform you that volleyball tournaments are big business.  Playing the games can often feel secondary to the larger goal of separating parents from their money.  There's the fee to get in, of course.  Then there's also the obligatory overpriced tournament sweatshirt (if it's $50, consider yourself lucky).  Then there's also the endless food options - we'd never before heard of an acai bowl until we started going to tournaments - that are of course A) ridiculously overpriced and B) much more appealing than the trail mix, fruit, and salami sticks you packed for your daughter.
3. There's always one player on every team who seems to take it upon herself to always go running after a ball that's sailed off the court.
4. The possible severity of an on-court player injury often feels inversely proportional to the amount of time it takes for a trainer to mosey over to provide aid.  The girl is crying on the court, holding her knee, but you take your time, bro.  No rush.
5. If you don't pay attention, you will get hit with a ball.  Guaranteed.  Most dangerous scenario: you're facing the team as they're warming up with serves coming right at you.
6. The timing of pool play "waves" is a mixed bag.  The morning wave typically starts at 8:00am, which means you have to get up very early to arrive early for warmups... but it also means you're done by 1pm and thus have the rest of the day to do what you want.  On the other hand, an afternoon 3:00pm wave of pool play lets you sleep in, sure, but it can make for a very late evening.  The worst combination, of course, is an afternoon wave (figure you'll back in the hotel by 9:30pm) followed by a morning wave the next day.  Brutal.
7. There's always one player on every team who is the master hair braider.
8. There is an etiquette to spectator seating that, unfortunately, isn't always followed.  Parents of the teams actually playing on the court get first dibs.  Then, after they're settled and only after they're settled, the rest of the seats are available to the general public.  A corollary to this: once your team is finished, get your slow ass up out of those chairs as expeditiously as possible so parents of the next team up can sit down.
9. There's always at least one set of parents who sit far apart from the other parents.  Reasons may vary.
10. Some referees just aren't good.  It had to be said.
11. We still don't understand the "in the net" rule.  But it's okay... you don't need to try and explain it to us.
12. We have learned the hard way that every club team has drama among players, parents, or both.  The only question is what form that drama will take.  It's not "if" but "when."  Usually it involves the emotional monster that is known as Lack of Playing Time.
13. We need a sociologist to study the subculture of dads responsible for recording the team games.  It's an intricate ritual of setting up the spindly tripod, arranging the camera just so, keeping track of the score via some kind of app, delivering encouraging shouts and cheers, and - eventually - taking it all apart again and uploading the footage into a pricey game management system.  Bonus points for those inevitable moments when an errant ball sends the whole thing flying.  Odds are even that any given dad can move fast enough to rescue the tripod before it hits the ground.
14. Here's the deal: while it's nice to play teams from other cities and states, do volleyball families really have to get on a plane (and spend all of that money) to accomplish that?  Cars can drive pretty far and for a lot less money.

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1990s Cultural Signifiers

We've read a few books by Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV).  He's an interesting author.  He reminds us of that friend we've all had who - often over drinks at a too-hip bar that they, of course, suggested - seems way smarter and erudite than the menial dead-end job they always seem to be working.  Klosterman has an opinion about everything and states those opinions with steely conviction, but his sentences can be so unwieldy and pretzel-twisty that we often feel like he's talking over our head.  And so we have no choice but to nod sagely as if we agree lest we admit we're rubes who can't follow him.  That said, it's a rare thing indeed to find an author who's so clearly thought this long and hard and deep about a subject that might seem trivial to other historians and essayists: pop culture.

In his book The Nineties Klosterman notes that marking decades can't be done on the calendar - they should be bookended through how the culture perceives that decade.  He argues that the 1990s started with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 (although he suggests that the 80s vibe may not have truly faded until 1991 or so) and ended with the September 11 attacks in 2001.  He further suggests that the Bush-Gore election in 2000 and that first year of the Bush presidency in 2001 were essentially an extension 1990s "so what?" ambivalence.  Times were pretty good and life was dull, the internet and smartphones hadn't yet turned everything upside down.

More interesting, though, is the idea Klosterman threads through the book that there will always be a disconnect between how you remember something happening and how it really was when it was actually happening.  That is, when you look back at the more dramatic turns of history from the vantage point of the present day, it can be easy to wonder how could that have possibly happened when at the time what happened seemed perfectly logical and wholly unsurprising.

Aside from all of this fancy philosophizing about the 1990s, why they were the way they were, and how we now remember them, we found pleasure simply following Klosterman as he wound his way through the decade ruminating on a number of people, places, and things that we'd forgotten about (or almost forgotten about).  We experienced a great many fizzy and nostalgic "oh yeah! we remember that!" moments. 

Here's a list of 1990s signifiers in no particular order.

* Political correctness
* Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill
* Clarence Thomas' 1991 Supreme Court confirmation
* Reality Bites
* Prozac Nation
* Grunge
* Ross Perot running for president
* The Gulf War - broadcast live on CNN
* Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction
* Star 69
* Windows 95
* Michael Jordan playing baseball
* Zima
* Dolly the cloned sheep
* Biosphere 2
* MTV's "The Real World"
* The Matrix
* Oprah Winfrey
* Titanic
* The all-purple "alternative" adjective
* The Blair Witch Project
* Eminem
* "The X Files"
* Generation X
* The long cardboard boxes CD used to come in
* George H.W. Bush
* The Unabomber
* Broadway's Rent
* 70s nostalgia ("That 70s Show," Dazed and Confused)
* Napster
* The rise of the internet (AOL and dial-up modems)
* Kurt Cobain suicide
* The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and impeachment
* Pauly Shore
* Jurassic Park
* "Achy Breaky Heart"
* Oklahoma City bombing
* Rodney King video
* Falling Down
* The Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998
* Y2K hysteria
* VHS tapes and Blockbuster Video
* Nirvana's Nevermind
* Tiger Woods
* The OJ murder trial
* American Beauty
* NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" lineup
* The Columbine school shooting
* The Matrix
* The word "queer"
* Kids
* 1994 baseball strike and cancelled World Series

A word about that cover photo.  We had that clear Princess-style phone in our college bedroom.

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Ten Musical Artists We've Been Obsessed with at One Point *

* In alphabetical order.  Cringe factor is in the red on the some of these.  Please don't judge us.

1. Kelly Clarkson
2. The (Dixie) Chicks
3. The Doors
4. Explosions in the Sky
5. Heart
6. Don Henley
7. Ivy
8. Madonna
9. Alanis Morissette
10. Van Halen

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Notes on Watching the "Alien" Rerelease with a 14-Year-Old

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien.  To commemorate the occasion, last weekend the movie was re-released in theaters.  We were surprised that the 14-year-old seemed interested in watching it.

* Teen girls in our part of town treat moviegoing like a sleepover.  Slippers, baggy hoodies, sweatpants, a fuzzy blanket.  When you're all cuddled up like that in a plush leather Cinemark chair - that's heated, no less - in a cold movie theater, it's not surprising that you might get a little drowsy.  Fifteen minutes into the movie, we get a whispered "I'm getting sleepy."

* Concessions report: Diet Dr Pepper with cherry and vanilla for us, blue Icee for the 14-year-old.  No popcorn, no candy.

* The folks behind this re-release clearly assumed that anyone buying a ticket has already seen the movie.  And so before the movie they screen a 15-minute featurette with Alien director Ridley Scott talking to the director of this summer's new Alien sequel.  And of course, we get lots of Alien clips that spoils good chunks of the movie.  Cue exasperated sighs and groans from the 14-year-old.

* Was the 14-year-old the youngest audience member?  Probably.  There was a family there and the boy may have been 12.

* We agree that the first act of Alien - pretty much everything until the alien gets into the ship - is slow.  We tried to warn the 14-year-old.  We found that chunk of movie slow when we first watched it thirty years ago.  That measured build-up, however, is no match for Zoomers raised on endless scrolls of bite-sized TikTok videos.

* After John Hurt has his big moment at the dining table, 14-year-old asks "Is that guy dead?"  Yes.  Yes, he is.

* We did not go full geek and wear our Nostromo T-shirt.

* The movie got the 14-year-old good on the jump scare when Tom Skeritt's in the dark air vent trying to figure out where the alien is - we know it's closing in but we're not sure from where - and he swings his flashlight around behind him... and the alien is right there!  Eek!

* The 14-year-old's assessment in the hallway outside the theater: "It was okay."  That's pretty high praise actually from someone who often thinks anything made before 2010 is dusty ancient history.

* The next day, when asked what were her favorite parts, the 14-year-old could think of two: when Sigourney Weaver blew the alien into space and when android Ian Holm's creepy white sweat first appeared.

* For the record, the 14-year-old loved James Cameron's Aliens sequel.  As any decent American would.

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Twenty Things We Love

The Cheese Fry has been at times labeled a cynical, negative, pessimistic misanthrope.  Often, that's totally fair.  But just because we like to complain doesn't mean we hate everything.  We do occasionally feel happy.  Submitted, then, for your approval are twenty things we absolutely love.

1. Richard Linklater's 1993 movie Dazed and Confused
2. Ice cold Dr Pepper in a glass bottle
3. Having the local broadcast of the hometown baseball game playing in the background on a weekend afternoon (runner up: playing the broadcast of golf in the background)
4. Being at the very back of a long left-turn line but still getting through the intersection before the green arrow turns yellow
5. Neneh Cherry's 1988 song "Buffalo Stance"
6. Cheddar fries from Snuffer's (bacon, chives, jalapenos on the side)
7. CBS' "The Price Is Right"
8. That cozy stretch of autumn from Halloween to Christmas
9. Film director Steven Soderbergh
10. Seeing a 90% or more battery change on our iPhone
11. The look and smell of a freshly mowed yard
12. The Hollywood and Vermont episodes of "I Love Lucy"
13. Larry McMurtry's 1985 novel Lonesome Dove
14. Playing Madden football on a PlayStation console
15. Wandering the aisles of a bookstore with money to spend
16. Our old second-floor apartment on La Brea Avenue
17. NBC's original recipe "Law and Order"
18. Our subscription to SiriusXM satellite radio
19. Disneyland
20. Watching a new movie opening weekend in a cold, mostly empty multiplex auditorium

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An Ode to Sound Warehouse

It's a shame Cheese Fry offspring won't ever experience aimless strolls along the aisles of a music store.  Those stores - Sound Warehouse, Hit Records on Forest Lane, Musicland (or was it Sam Goody?) in the local malls - played a big part of our coming of age, usually experienced with friends apart from parents.  We always felt older and more sophisticated somehow going in those stores.  Well into our 20s, in fact, we were still taking frequent spins through the Wherehouse at the Beverly Connection to check out the sales bins or the Virgin Megastore on Sunset that had this amazing innovation of providing samples of tracks from the week's top ten albums by just putting on one of the headphones lined along the back wall. 

As we all know, the digitization and iTunes-ification of the music industry slowly but surely drove those stores out of business.  There are music sections in stores like Target or Barnes and Noble, sure, but those are sanitized facsimiles of the brash, sprawling, neon stores of the past.  Young people now don't even own physical media.  Their songs are bits and bytes in a Spotify playlist, a trend we admit that's completely infected us as well.  Our background music now mostly comes courtesy of Sirius XM with an embarrassing lean towards 80s and 90s.  We can't even remember the last time we bought a CD and that's coming from someone who - much like you, we guess - were once the proud owners of a CD tower packed with the coolest artists only.  (Side note: to whoever stole our Toad the Wet Sprocket CD during one of our 1993 apartment parties, a pox on your house.  Of all the CDs to choose from, that's the one you picked?)

The Sound Warehouse by Bachman Lake - and later, when we didn't dare run the risk of being seen by friends with our father, the Sound Warehouse out by the late, great Valley View Mall - was to our teenaged brain an oasis of coolness.  We couldn't shake a feeling of being an outsider walking through those doors, as if the other customers knew weren't trendy enough to enter their world.  It was always exciting, like walking into a real-world version of MTV.  The music blasting, playing the latest release by some popular artist - or even better, some obscure artist who hadn't yet "sold out."  The grungy employees who seemed so impossibly hip and bored we didn't dare ask a question for fear of a painfully dismissive eye roll.  The band posters and flyers covering every wall.  But most of all, there were the endless options.  Rows and rows of LPs to flip through like alphabetized card catalogs, all of it organized by genre.  Rock here, country there, soundtracks back over here.  It was organized and yet also somehow sloppy and overwhelming.  You didn't have to buy anything.  Part of the fun was just looking at the album covers and reading the song lists, debating which item was worth your gas mowing money.  It was a whole process.  And get this, Zoomers, you could only buy whatever was in stock.  (In theory, yes, you could have the store order something for you but we never did that.)

During our early middle school and high school years, our focus was cassette tapes because they played in our bedroom (dual) cassette deck and our 1979 Ford Granada.  The music stores of the 1980s had endless shelves full of cassette tapes stacked like gold bars in Fort Knox, all of them in that distinctive crinkly shrink wrap.  The less we say about our brief foray into the Columbia Music House record club - ten cassettes for only $1! - the better.  And then somewhere along the way we discovered the 45 single.  Friends liked to make fun of our fixation with top 40 pop radio hits.  So instead of spending $9 for a cassette to get one radio song, why not spend $2 for a little 45 record with just that one song?  That there is smart economics.  We ultimately ended up with the equivalent of about three shoe boxes worth of 45s and recently converted a good chunk into MP3s.  For the record, about 10% were too scratched to transfer and another 10% or so deemed by us to fall into the "what were we thinking?" category and unworthy of preserving.  Our collection offered an unexpected cross-section of the rise and fall of 45s: lots and lots of 80s hits and a few early 90s ones through about 1992 or so which coincided with the industry's shift to cassingles.  That was actually the name of them.  We bought a few of those, sure, but soon the record companies realized they'd make more money making us buy the whole CD.

For the record, our first cassette purchase was a three-fer: The Police's Synchronicity, The Cars' Heartbeat City, and Huey Lewis and the News' Sports.  Pretty sure the first CDs we bought alongside the sleek badass CD player we got for Christmas one year were Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 and Milli Vanilli's Girl You Know It's True (they were fakes, but those are solid songs, people).

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Observations from a Middle School Volleyball Season

This fall and last fall, the Cheese Fry has spent a number of Thursday evenings sitting on hard plastic bleachers in half-full middle school gymnasiums cheering on the 13-year-old Lil Fry.  Hers is a better-than-average team.  Last season, they got the top seed in the post-season tournament, but then were inexplicably eliminated after failing to close out (they only needed to score one more point!) what seemed to be an easy win.  The outcome of the current season remains unknown - the team may be a little better than they were as a 7th grade team, but so are the other district teams.

Forthwith, some observations made during our trip along the middle school volleyball circuit...

* Some of these gyms look like an NBA stadium what with all of their championship banners hanging from the rafters.

* While we can appreciate the attempt to create excitement and energy by blasting music during timeouts, these schools seem to all use some sort of school athletics streaming services that's supported by ads.  And so during a timeout, rather than get some amped-up top-40 song, you often get the end of a Kroger commercial.  Let's go, team!  Produce is always fresh and always affordable!

* We've gotten to see a number of gymnasium wall murals (some pretty good, others... less so) depicting school mascots, usually "breaking" through the gym's wall and looking extremely angry and fierce.  A photo compilation of these murals is desperately needed.

* Paper tickets are oh, so 20th century.  Now it's all about buying tickets online and showing your phone app at the door to a disinterested mom and/or student.

* There's always a bored police officer lingering by the gym door.

* We'd love to know why kids going to buy concessions prefer to sprint full speed from their seat to the exit doors.  It's not just little kids - a lot of the middle schoolers do it too.  Is it to avoid blocking everyone's view?  Is it to hear the loud clomps of their sneakers on the hardwood?

* Theater students have nothing on the over-the-top antics the two student line judges - with their big orange flags - perform to keep themselves entertained.

* One mental game we like to play is trying to figure out which parents belong to which player on the court.  It's always a small victory when we piece it together through subtle clues (i.e. seeing an adult hug a player offers no challenge - that's too easy and obvious).  We're like Columbo secretly eyeing the people around us, looking for little gestures and phrases.  But there remain many open cases: some adults we see at every game we cannot pair up with any of the players.

* It's always a thrill when we get to throw a ball back in.  Like we're briefly part of the action.

* A good drinking game would be to do a shot whenever someone who's not paying attention gets accidentally boinked in the head by a ball during the pre-game warmups.

* Between the shrill voices of 13-year-old girls and the terrible, echoing acoustics of gyms, it's not always easy to understand sideline cheers.  Of those we can understand, this one is the best: when the opponent hits the ball out of bounds, Lil Fry's team shouts "O! U! T! Out! See ya!"  With a little snarky goodbye salute on the last two words.  Teenaged genius.

* The most common phrase you'll hear in the stands - asked by children to their parents, of course - is "You have any money?"  Middle school athletic concessions stands have more variety than your local movie theater.

* Unofficial tally - the most popular concession items are ballpark nachos with the hot cheese sauce, popcorn (just the Orville Redenbacher microwave bags), and ring pops that turn your lips and tongue blue.

* You'll note there's always one girl way better than everyone else on a team.  Good things happen around her.  Likewise, there's one girl on every team who clearly is in over her head.  You cringe when the ball comes her way.

* Promoting sportsmanship is a good thing, of course, but the traditional line of girls at the net slapping five after the game with a monotone "Good game... Good game... Good game..." reminds us of the David Spade flight attendant sketch on Saturday Night Live where the phony cheer of "Buh bye!" really meant "Get lost."

* If you get through an evening without the scoreboard operator making an error, it was a good day.

* What's true for your college and professional sports fandom is also true for middle school: few things are more frustrating than watching "your" team lose through self-inflicted mistakes and unforced errors.  It's understandable when the other team is better.  That you can accept.  But when it's clear the teams are more or less evenly matched and your team is floundering hopelessly, that is infuriating.

One last observation - every middle school volleyball game will attract at least one spectator from these nine categories:

1. The mom who shouts and cheers at an inappropriately loud volume ("Get your ball back!")

2. While Loud Mom is trying to help in her own way, the dad counterpart who shouts and cheers at an inappropriately loud volume has more of an impatient edge ("Get your head in the game!")

3. A variation of Loud Dad is the obnoxious dad who likes to whistle really loud - this guy is usually sitting near you for maximum audio impact

4. The mom who offer encouragements by name to every single player who touches the ball like she's calling the game for Fox ("Good serve, Emma!" "Nice set, Olivia!" "What a hit, Lucy!")

5. The stoic, Vulcan-like dad who just sits there, facing forward like a wooden carving no matter what happens

6.  The dad secretly watching an ESPN game on his iPhone

7. The two moms who know all of the good gossip about the school team, the school team players, the school coaches, the last practice, and also (bonus!) what's going with the school players' individual club teams - and rest assured that each will also happily address for each other any knowledge gaps so they each end the conversation armed with new juicy intel

8. Bored younger siblings who are either running wild (sprinting to the concession stand, as mentioned) or slumped in the stands playing on a device in a far dark corner of the bleachers

9. The spectators who sit behind you and deliver an unending, podcast-style conversation and commentary about anything and everything other than the actual game everyone's paid good money to watch

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Observations from a Minor League Baseball Game

The Cheese Fry family recently visited a local Double-A baseball park to watch a game.  It's been well over two years - if not more - since our last visit, and while the kids grumbled and whined about going ("Three hours long?!") there were conversations on the way home about where to sit on the next visit.  The consensus seemed to be the outfield grass, which is fine with us - it's half as expensive as the infield seats.

* It's not a baseball game unless you eat a steamed hot dog ($5) wrapped up in that paper foil sheet and slathered in enough room temperature mustard to make your fingers yellow.

* All baseball games require multiple discussions of how long it will take sun to move behind the upper deck and give you the sweet relief of shadow.

* Our row was completely empty, at least 20 seats curving out to the right in our section, but we had one guy sitting right next to us.  Why?  Also: who attends a baseball game all alone?

* We don't what that mascot was supposed to be.  Sort of a giant beaver, but also orange and yellow and shaggy like a Muppet.  Whatever it was, it wore a number 2 jersey.

* There's a low-key ritual involved with baseball field preparations that can be soothing to witness.  Raking the infield, drawing the chalk lines, hosing down the infield dirt, placing the bases.  It's a ballpark reset. What's happened before doesn't matter.  What's important is now.  What happens next.  On the diamond tonight, which is being freshly assembled and cleaned and groomed just for us, anything is possible.  Anything can happen.

* We still don't fully understand the difference between the OBP and the batting average.

* At any sporting event, people-watching of course can be just as engaging at what's happening on the field.  While we secretly judged the bad tattoos, the inappropriately dressed teen girls, and the couples who didn't look like they belonged together, the winner on that evening surely went to the two old timers sitting right behind us who didn't shut up for seven innings.  Their loud running commentary most notably included a discussion of Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle and shooting skill.  They also had comments about a player named Luken.  "Why not just drop the N and go by Luke?"

* Honorable mention to the huge group one section over.  This was the boisterous relatives and friends of one of the visiting team players, all of whom cheered and shouted whenever he was on the field.  (To his credit, he hit a lead off double.)

* An post-game fireworks show allowed us to sit on the outfield grass.  Thick grass, but clipped very short.  Scratchy, not soft.  And yet, not as flawless as it might look from a distance.  We saw some divots and bald spots.

* Another baseball game essential food item: the bag of salted peanuts ($3.50).  Nowhere else can you make that big of a mess on the floor and then just walk away with a shrug.

* Scoreboards have come a long way in our lifetime.  Gone are the crude message boards made up of incandescent light bulb grids.  Now it's all gigantic flatscreen TVs.  We particularly marveled at a real-time update of the opposing pitcher's ERA as he gave up several runs in the middle of the game.

* Not a fan of the row of urinals without privacy barriers, people.

* Whoever ran the sound board was earning their paycheck.  An endless, wall to wall string of audio drops, music cues, and sound effects.  Is that person following a rigid script or just selecting on the fly what to play and when to play it?  Bonus points for the "Price Is Right" loser cue after a strikeout.

* Stadium was maybe half full, so the half-hearted attempt to start the Wave fizzled quickly.

* We often daydream about what sort of song we'd want played for us if we were a player walking up to the plate.  In those 10 seconds, how would you define yourself?  You could go the obvious route and play something hard and heavy like AC/DC.  Or you could go goofy, maybe play "Mmmbop" or "Margaritaville."  Or you could go instrumental and maybe pick the "Game of Thrones" theme or that Alan Parsons Project song "Sirius" that the Chicago Bulls made famous.  We'd probably end up picking some cheesy 80s song like "Your Love" by the Outfield.  The Outfield.  Get it?  Baseball?

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Remote Control Inventory

When we were growing up, the family television was a big Magnavox cabinet with a little black metal wireless remote control that beeped when you pushed the buttons.  How cool is that blue "power" button?  Around third grade or so, the family updated to Qube cable.  Not only did we suddenly now get dozens more channels, but we also got a fancy wired remote control.  

Our personal little 13-inch color TV - the one that went with us to California in the mid-90s - had no such space-age luxury.  That little TV (which weighed way more than it looked) sported an actual hand-crank channel dial.  When's the last time you saw one of those?  A knob for VHF and a knob for UHF.  Tuning in your channel was always accompanied by that satisfying plastic clack-clack-clack. This was also the age of newspaper TV guides before onscreen lists were ever a thing, but that's for another blog ost.

Flash forward 30 years to a family coffee table wire basket filled with remote controls.  These are not the dusty remotes we all have that go untouched.  The list below, for example, does not include the PlayStation 3 remote that gets dusted off every so often whenever someone wants to play a game or watch a Bluray DVD, nor does the list include the even more dusty remotes that go to unplugged DVD players and VHS decks and even an original Tivo-branded DVR stacked neatly in a back closet.  Those remotes are all stashed away out of sight.

No, the four remotes in the basket see frequent use.  Multiple scrapes and dog-tooth marks are proof.  

1. DirecTV - This is the granddaddy, the big gray plastic beast that controls channel selection and play functions for the built-in DVR.  The biggest frustration with this one - aside from a perpetual need to replace the batteries - is the fact that, even as bulky and colorful as it is, it's easy to mix up the buttons.  Invariably, when watching a DVRd show, we go to push "pause" but instead accidentally push "exit" and get zapped back to the main menu, requiring multiple steps to drill down into the right menu and resume the recording.  Profanity in these situations is unavoidable.

2. Vizio TV - This remote has endless rows of tiny rubber buttons with nooks and crannies that trap filth and grime, but we really only use two buttons - the one that turns the flatscreen on and off and the one that lets us toggle between video inputs.

3. Vizio soundbar - In theory, we were all excited to connect the new fancy soundbar to our iPhones to play music via Bluetooth, turning our living room into a hip, funky hangout with a 21st century digital jukebox.  And yet, we've used that feature... maybe five times in two years.  Note also: whatever you do, please do not attempt to adjust the volume with any remote other than this one.  You'll just mess everything up.

4. Amazon Fire Stick - This is a late addition to the basket, only arriving last fall.  But it's certainly made up for lost time and has very much become a fan favorite.  At this point, the Cheese kids probably consider  streaming platforms like Amazon, Netflix, and Disney+ as "TV" more than traditional outlets like ABC, NBC, or even old school cable stations like TBS.  Our big irritation here is the remote's size.  It's barely bigger than a pack of chewing gum.  It's also one of those remotes trying to be clever with just four or five buttons that do everything.  Even better, it's surprisingly difficult to remember which button is the "pause" button - remember that this is a family that sits still for nothing, so we have to frequently stop the action for popcorn making, for dog wrangling, for bathroom going, for blanket adjusting... the list goes on forever - especially when the Cheese family insists on a pitch black living room to watch anything, which means that we're unable to actually look at the remote to help us remember which tiny recessed plastic nub is the right one. 

This surely sounds familiar to all of the readers out there.  Every viewing experience requires a complex series of inputs and adjustments across multiple remote controls.  Good luck finding them all when you need them.  The sofa is black, the remotes are black, the room is dark.  When we booked a house sitter years ago, the directions we had to create for TV operation looked like technical specs in their flowchart if/then confusion.

You can tell Generation X by our nostalgic affection for those handcrank dials.

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17 Stations at an Elementary School "Field Day"

As one might imagine, the current "Field Day" experience for Generation Z is a far cry from the one of our youth that typically involved little more than foot races and maybe using the playground equipment (all blistering hot steel and cracked dirt, of course, no plastic surfaces or wood chips to be found) as a makeshift obstacle course.  

The format in 2019 - at least for the two Li'l Frys at their elementary school past week - is this: each classroom of 20 or so kids rotates through all 17(!) stations, getting about fifteen minutes per station.  There's a morning group (8:10am-11:00am) and then an afternoon group (11:30am-2:30pm).  The logistics behind this sort of progression involves hundreds of teachers, volunteers, and hyperactive kids is military-like in its complexity and implementation.  Special commendation to the staff member who had to blast the air horn "rotate!" signal every 15 minutes all day.

1. Nine Square (indoors) - Requiring a do-it-yourself PVC pipe cage, nine players each have a square space from which to pass a ball back and forth ("no double taps!") over the top rails of the PVC cage bars.  A kind of three-dimensional variation of the old Four Square game.  If the ball hits the floor inside your square or if you pass the ball outside the cage's boundaries, you're out.  Then everyone shuffles forward to take your spot in the nine spaces a new player enters in the first space.
2. Basketball Knockout (indoors) - This one confused us.  Something about two players shooting but the first shooter has to make it before the second one makes it.  That shooter is safe, so the other is out, but then sometimes the other one can keep shooting.  Huh?  Whatever happened to "Horse" or "Around the World"?
3. Agility Course (indoors) - What you get when you make kids run across taped down circles, hop over small hurdles, and weave through plastic cones. Low tech, but the kids seem to kind of like it.
4. Snack and Class Photo (indoors) - Every kid got a fruit punch popsicle. Hardly seems to us like a proper station.
5. Toss - Throwing tennis balls into holes in a canvas target like a midway carnival game.
6. Bounce House - Why not turn a birthday party gimmick into a "Field Day" station?  Jumping and tackling your friends in mid-air can be exercise.
7. Inflatable Obstacle Course - Self explanatory.
8. Wrecking Ball - Yet another inflatable.  Climb inside and stand on one of four platforms, then swing a giant vinyl ball at each other.  Last one standing wins.  Reminds us of the late, great ABC show "Wipeout!"
9. Playground - This seems kind of lazy, turning the playground these kids use every day into a "station."  And what's up with schools now putting those giant canvas tents over playgrounds to make shade?  Why didn't someone come up with that 40 years ago to better protect us from future skin cancers?  Thanks for nothing, Baby Boomers.
10. Sack Race and Three-Legged Race - Now we're talking.  This is old school "Field Day."  We can't remember for sure that these kind of races were featured at our F.P. Caillet "Field Days" of the late 70s/early 80s, but we're guessing they were.
11. Hamster Balls - Easily the most impressive station.  Kids climb inside huge clear inflatable spheres, then run on the inside surface like a hamster wheel (get it?) to move forward and backward along a "track."  We managed this station for 90 minutes in the blazing afternoon sun.  Big mistake.  They look like harmless, puffy-looking toys but they are formidable beasts of hot vinyl that are hard to maneuver and unwieldy to wrangle, especially for the younger kids who either don't know how or aren't strong enough to run on the inside surface of the ball and create momentum.  Which means we're stuck pushing them while they flop around inside like a tube sock in the dryer.  Then there's the issue of trying to rotate the ball to get the one doorway level with the ground.  If a kid comes back with the ball and the door's facing straight up in the air, get ready for screaming muscle pain and muttered curses.  It's a miracle we didn't get heat stroke out there.  Next year we're going to pick an indoor station.
12. Gaga Pit - A Thunderdome sort of thing where you step inside a plywood octagon and play a game with a ball.  We've heard about it but never seen it in action.
13. Tug of War - Pretty exciting for the first couple of minutes.  But then you have another 12 minutes to kill before the stations rotate.  How many times can you do this without the kids losing interest?  Maybe three.
14. Soccer Kick - Two players are the goalie, two players attack and try to score a goal.  Rotate and repeat.
15. Water Ball - Fill garbage cans with water from a hose, add soakable hacky sack balls, then wage war.  It's really just a delivery system for getting the kids wet.  (No overhead throwing allowed, wink wink.)
16. Water Race - Relay race where two teams take turns transporting water into an empty bucket by filling up cups and holding them over their head as they run.  First team to fill the empty bucket wins.  The "get extremely wet" requirement comes from the holes poked in the bottom of the cups.  As expected, the handoff relay element quickly vanishes and the kids just start running one after the other.
17. Inflatable Slide - The sort of thing we would have loved as a kid.  The slide is 20 feet tall easy.

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The Pop Culture Birthday Comparison

The Cheese Fry turns 47 today, which is pretty old no matter how you slice it.  We wanted to rub salt in the wound and look at some performances from our youth and calculate the age of the actor when he appeared in that role.  These characters all feel very grown-up and adult and manly, but in truth most of them were far younger then than we are now. Ouch.

33 - Bruce Willis' age in Die Hard (1988)
33 - Mel Gibson's age in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
34 - Sean Connery's age in Goldfinger (1964)
34 - Bill Murray's age in Ghostbusters (1984)
37 - George Clooney's age in Out of Sight (1998)
37 - Robert Redford's age in The Sting (1973)
37 - Arnold Schwarzenegger's age in The Terminator (1987)
38 - Harrison Ford's age in The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
38 - Michael Keaton's age in Batman (1989)
38 - Craig T. Nelson's age in Poltergeist (1982)
40 - Chevy Chase's age in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
40 - John Travolta's age in Pulp Fiction (1994)
41 - Clint Eastwood's age in Dirty Harry (1971)
42 - Tom Hanks' age in Saving Private Ryan (1998)
43 - Roy Scheider's age in Jaws (1975)
45 - Dustin Hoffman's age in Tootsie (1982)
46 - Jimmy Stewart's age in Rear Window (1954)
46 - Paul Gleason's age in The Breakfast Club (1984)
46 - Sam Neill's age in Jurassic Park (1993)
46 - Tom Skeritt's age in Alien (1979)

For this bit, a tip of the hat to the great Lex G.

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The Hollywood To-Do List (circa 2015)

Two years after moving to Texas, the Cheese Fry was feeling "homesick" for Southern California. By chance, our office hired a new temp worker with dreams of moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting.  And so we got to play the role of wise industry mentor and seasoned Hollywood sage (whether the temp worker liked it or not), which culminated in us preparing for him a list of things he had to do as soon as he made the move west in late 2015.

We present the list below with the understanding while its validity may have faded in the last four years, it would serve as an essential document for any new Angelino resident in 2015.

* See a movie in the Arclight Hollywood Cinerama Dome.
* Look for celebrities at the Grove outdoor mall on Fairfax (especially inside the Barnes and Noble bookstore).
* Take the Warner Bros. VIP studio tour (it's pricey, though - wait for family to come visit - but you see everything on the lot).
* Eat at Fatburger (make sure you find one that can charbroil - some just have the griddle), Zankou Chicken (the garlic paste is amazing - comes with the chicken but ask for extra), El Coyote and El Cholo (great Mexian at both places), Astroburger on Santa Monica in West Hollywood, Islands (get the mushroom burger), and Jerry's Famous Deli (the biggest menu we've ever seen).  For seafood, there's the high-end Gladstones (great view where the PCH meets Sunset) and the low-end Reel Inn (on PCH north of Gladstones).
* Use TVTickets.com to go see a talk show or sitcom taping (tickets are free so they go fast).
* Walk on the Santa Monica Pier at dusk.
* Drive the Sunset Strip at night.
* Visit the Samuel French bookstore on Sunset Blvd. - packed full of acting/directing books and plays.
* See a game at old-school Dodger Stadium (just don't wear any team gear but Dodgers team gear), not the new-money Angels Stadium.
* Watch a Dodger game on TV called by Vin Scully before he dies.
* Take in the view of L.A. basin (on a clear day - if you can find one) from the Griffith Observatory.
* Watch an old movie at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.
* Spend a day or weekend in Big Bear up in the mountains east of L.A.
* Experience the hippie weirdness of the Venice Boardwalk.
* Get a drink at the Cat and Fiddle Pub on Sunset, the Pig n Whistle on Hollywood, or the retro (dark wood, red leather booths, no windows) Musso and Frank on Hollywood.
* Prepare to pay to park no matter where you are - valet, meters, garages, none of it's cheap.  Give yourself extra time to decipher the parking signs.
* See a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
* Use the word "the" when referring to the freeways (Texans say "635," but in L.A. it's "the 10" and "the 405").
* Avoid the freeways whenever possible (you can always break the ice with someone by asking how traffic was or how they got somewhere - people are proud of their shortcuts).  Use side streets and get creative.
* See the handprints and footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
* Read Deadline.com and either Variety.com or THR.com as often as you can to know what's happening in town.
* Make sure your apartment has working air conditioning that blows cold and hard.
* Stay off the city buses, but the Metro subway can be a fun way to do special-occasion trips (there's a station right next to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood).
* Remember that Hollywood is a very small factory town - everyone may not know everyone, but everyone knows someone who knows someone.
* Work the room and be extroverted.
* Get a part in a major motion picture.

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Thirteen Things We Learned on a Trip to Manhattan

The Cheese Fry spent 17 years in Los Angeles (we lived in Pasadena for a few years, then hit for the Hollywood cycle - West Hollywood 1999-2004, Hollywood 2004-2009, North Hollywood 2009-2012), but only last month did we find ourselves visiting the Other Coast when a work conference landed us in the Marriott Marquis right in the heart of Times Square in New York City.

Below are a few things we learned.

1. The Empire State Building seems impossibly tall.  We were doing the tourist thing at Rockefeller Center and noticed the Empire State Building towering just south of us.  It seemed so close, we figured we'd just do a quick walk down there for a few pictures.  Turns out it looked close because it's a hundred stories tall.  After 20 minutes of walking, we finally got to the front of it.  Craning our neck up, we couldn't even see the spire on top.  Somehow, maybe because it's stone and brick, it seems more intimidating and impressive than the taller glass and steel of One World Trade Center.

2. New York pizza is pretty good, but we probably would still give the nod to Chicago deep dish.  When you take your first bite into a pizza in Chicago, it's unlike any pizza you've ever had before.  It's akin to a religious experience.  The New York pizza we tried in a little pizzeria on Seventh Avenue was good but hardly transcendent.  The toppings were top notch, agreed, but the crust was rather ordinary.  Bonus points, though, for what we can only assume is a genuine New York customer service treatment: grumpy and surly counter workers who seemed barely interested in our business  The three employees maybe said four words to us combined.

3. Times Square is like Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles, magnified by a factor of ten.  The intersection of Hollywood and Highland is a garish, neon-lit tourist trap of high-end stores and restaurants packed side-by-side with cheap junk stores and street food vendors, all of it goosed by the presence of the historic Chinese Theater (the one with the sidewalk footprints), the famous Dolby Theater (where the Oscars are handed out), and the Masonic Temple where ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" tapes every afternoon. It always packed with tourists of all ages, sizes, and nationalities and the streets are filled with tour buses (both the charter sort and the double-decker guided tour sort).  That's the vibe of Times Square, only bigger, louder, and with brighter lights.  When we walked out onto Times Square at 11pm on a Saturday night, it was elbow-to-elbow with people and lit up like high noon.  The giant, three-story video boards running advertising loops (our favorites were for Coca-Cola and McDonald's) were right out of the flying car scenes in Blade Runner.

4. The Statue of Liberty is way far away from Manhattan island.  Watching movies, you get this sense that Liberty Island is a quick hop from New York City, all alone in the harbor, bravely facing the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and all those huddles masses yearning to be free.  The truth is not quite so romantic.  The Status of Liberty is essentially landlocked on all sides by dreary, industrial skylines.  Who knows where the actual entrance to the ocean is?  More disappointing, we walked all the way to the southern tip of Manhattan to see the statue.  It was so far away and so tiny we could barely even tell what it was.

5. You know that saying about "there's never a cop when you need one"?  That doesn't really apply with the NYPD.  Admittedly, we mostly visited the popular tourist attractions.  But everywhere we turned, there were groups of police officers gathered together talking, walking on patrol, or sitting in their parked cars.  Some even had assault rifles slung across their shoulders.  When Wikipedia reports there are 38,000 officers, we believe it.

6. The New York subway is just as old and quirky and crowded and you might imagine.  Here are some specifics:
* At one point, we walked down at least three stories to get to our platform.  These subway tunnels run deep.
* We saw a guy in a tuxedo playing the cello for money.
* A local confirmed that you can indeed see rats if you look down off the platform and onto the tracks.
* We witnessed one surprisingly clean-cut, well-dressed guy making a dramatic speech to the entire car about how he needed money to buy food.  He was ignored.
* We noticed a guy sitting across the aisle that seemed unable to stop staring at us in a most unnerving manner.
* On our trip down to the World Trade Center, the subway was mostly empty and quiet.  The trip back was another story.  Our car seemed already pretty full when we got to Penn Station.  But the word "full" takes on a whole other meaning when another 20 or so people shoved their way through the doors and filled every possible nook and cranny.  Lesser tourists than us surely would have experienced a claustrophobic panic attack.  Luckily, our stop was the next stop and we were close enough to the doors to surf the wave of shuffle-step disembarkation out to the platform.
* We saw no graffiti.
* Do your homework in advance so you know which subway going in which direction you want to get so you at least look like you know what you're doing.
* We giddily got to perform the stereotypical New York City subway move whereby you dart through the doors at the last possible instant, just moments before they blast closed.
* We saw people with grocery bags, clearly using the subway for doing to their personal shopping and errand running the way normal people use cars.

7. You step off the curb against the light at your own risk.  We didn't want to look like a rube tourist.  We saw everyone else walking when the light shined a red "Don't Walk."  Those people all looked local, bundled up with briefcases and earbuds, headed to work or home.  We wanted to follow their lead and fit in.  That's all well and good... just be sure to look both ways.  New York taxi cabs will not stop if they have the right of way.  And in our case, they don't even honk.  We walked against the light one afternoon and happened to glance to the left in time to see the front grill of a cab charging right us.  We stepped out of the way of the driver's side fender without a moment to spare like some kind of Manhattan toreador.  We like to think that he knew he'd miss us and that he would have hit the brakes if needed.  Right?

8. Broadway theaters aren't the kind of venues we expected.  We saw Wicked in Los Angeles at a huge, sprawling theater.  That's the usual Broadway regional touring venue.  But the New York City theaters are older and much, much smaller.   We saw Chicago at the Ambassador Theater, built in the 1920s and holding just 1000 people.  It's old and it looks old.  Cramped seating, worn walls, out-dated decor.  And concessionaires were right there in aisles selling soda, water, and candy out of big boxes on shoulder straps like they do at a baseball game.  The guy in front of us actually bought a giant Kit-Kat bar.  Whatever happened to the dignity of live theater, people?  (The New York City definition of a "Broadway theater," by the way, has nothing to do with location; it must seat more than 500.  The more you know.)

9. Careful framing by countless cameras over the years has given the wrong impression about the size of the Rockefeller Center ice rink.  It's tiny.  Standing there we realized how easy it is for camera operators to just, like, not show the front end of the rink when you're facing that gold statue, those flags, and the brick facade of Rockefeller Center.  If you don't show the front of the rink, then TV and movie audiences are likely to assume the rink just goes on forever.  The public rink at your local mall is probably way bigger.  Weird.

10. Good luck hailing a cab when you're lost.  We thought we knew where to find a subway station to catch a ride back from looking at the Statue of Liberty.  But we could not find it anywhere.  It should be right... here.  But nothing.  Our feet were tired, it was getting dark, our iPhone battery was down to 8%, and the lonely deserted side streets we were walking didn't have that same hubbub of tourist traffic.  If only we could hail and cab and just pay our way back to the hotel.  No cabs in sight.  Long story short, we made it back.

11. It's hard to understand the size and scale of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.  Then you're in the plaza looking at the reflecting pools that fill the giant square footprints of the absent Towers.  Those building things were massive.

12. NBC's "The Today Show" covers their anchor desks with quilts between broadcasts.  We know because we peered in through those famous Studio 1-A windows at around 11am on a weekday.  The giant cameras are all there, slumped over asleep, but the desks are covered up.

13. The bronze bull statue on Wall Street is actually a tourist destination.  To us, that statue would be considered a rather obscure Manhattan landmark, likely not even cracking the top 30 on a list of New York City icons.  But there the people were, lined up probably 40 deep in front of the bull, patiently waiting a turn to pose for photos in front of the statue.

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Confessions of a Youth Volleyball Parent

* The more we watch volleyball, the less we understand the rules.  Just when we have it all figured out (you can only score if you're serving, you see), something happens on the court that completely baffles us.  We've now more or less given up and just crinkle our face to make it look like we understand everything and are carefully considering all levels of strategy and execution.  You think they're buying it?
* The worst is when the ball rolls to our feet and we have no choice but to put it back in play.  But who's serve is it now? We weren't paying that close attention. Well, we were paying attention but now with the pressure of everyone looking over to see where the ball went we can't remember who served last.  Does the ball go back to that team... or this team?  Invariably, we choose wrong and toss the ball to the wrong side, only to suffer the humiliation of an 8-year-old girl correcting our mistake and sending the ball where it actually belongs.
* Some of the other volleyball moms aren't drinking water from their fancy big plastic tumbler, if you know what we mean.  This isn't speculation. This has been verified.
* As exhilarating as it can be to watch your kid's team run up the score on a hapless opponent, it's just as disheartening to have your kid be a member of that hapless team getting steamrolled by a superior opponent.  We've experienced both ends of that particular scoreboard spectrum, once during the same two-hour period.
* Here are the six kinds of players you'll find on a youth volleyball team:
1 The kid who's afraid to touch the ball with anything approaching intent, so the player ducks away from an incoming ball, serves with a wet-fish half-ass swing that barely makes it to the net, and otherwise cringes the entire time they're out there.
2. The kid who might as well be on the junior varsity team now, making sophisticated digs and spikes and launching untouchable, rocket serves over the net.  How is that little kid already that good?  Sometimes they're even the shortest kid on the team.
3. The kid that's completely inconsistent, making MVP moves one moment, then flailing around cluelessly the next.  You never know what you're going to get.
4. The coach's kid.  Sometimes they're pretty good, but mostly they're not.
5. The hapless kid that tries so hard every time but just can't make anything happen.  They're returning one ball straight up into the rafters, shanking another into the face of the scorekeeper, or swinging with all of their might and completely missing (the ball never got within five feet of them).  They're trying, but it's a disaster every time.
6. The kid who's out there doing anything but paying attention.  This player is dancing and laughing or craning their neck around to look at the scoreboard or chatting with the player next to them or staring at the floor.  What they're not doing is staying focused and watching the ball.  This is probably your kid, FYI.
* You don't hit the volleyball with your hands.  You hit the volleyball on the flat part of your forearms.  We didn't know this.  That is apparently called by some "the platform."
* This whole youth sports thing isn't a cute little bit of recreation, people.  It's an industry.  The facility we use is packed with as many as ten games going on at once.  It's a cacophony of whistles, tennis shoe squeaks, ball thuds, and parental cheers.  And if everyone's paying as much as we're paying, that place is essentially a suburban Fort Knox.
* It's always fun when your kid's team is down by a point or two with the clocking winding down and there's zero urgency or hustle from anyone to try and get in a few more plays to get the go-ahead score before time expires.  In the final seconds, it's like everyone purposely goes into foot-shuffling underwater slow-motion when it comes time to reset and toss the ball back to the server.
* It can be very hard to maintain a positive, encouraging attitude when the ball drops straight down equidistance between three players on your kid's team and no one moves an arm or a foot even one inch to try and return it.  This happens multiple times during a game.
* We think that snack counter popcorn just came out of the popper.  How can it already taste so stale?
* To say we get tired of yelling "Rotate!" at games would be an understatement.
* As mentioned, we don't know much about volleyball, but even we have determined that at this level, teams live and die on the ability to serve a ball over the net.  There's just not a lot of returning.  But then you have these kids serving the ball by tossing it up and palm smacking it like they're Misty May at the Olympics (rather than underhand hit it out of your left hand).  If we weren't so lazy, we'd keep track of how many palm-hits actually go over the net and stay in bounds.  If it's more than 15% we'd be shocked.  But a majority of the kids do it that way regardless.
* We understand that in the world of youth sports, coaching usually comes down to whichever parent has been sufficiently guilted into volunteering.  It's the luck of the draw as to whether your $115 (and ten weeks of your life) will be spent with a coach that will patiently and competently teach skills or a coach that has no idea what they're doing and doesn't seem inclined to learn.  
* But if you're not going to volunteer, you really have no room to complain.  Ms. Cheese Fry didn't volunteer to coach this summer because she didn't think she'd do a good job.  Only now, seeing the coach we ended up with, does she truly know what it means to "not do a good job."  We're calling it a teachable moment.
* Maybe adults should end their workday by lining up and slapping hands with their coworkers with a mumbled "good game."  Would the world be a better place?
* Move your feet and get in front of the ball!

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