Anonymous Communist

Yes, Mrs. C’s hair is about six inches tall in this photo. She’s going to kill me for posting this.

So yeah… Brewhaus prom. I have never heard of such an event, but I am assured it is for real. I understand that some folks take it seriously, but we are striving to look as douchey as possible. My light blue Sansabelt slacks (not pictured) ensure my victory in this area.

A full report and more pictures to follow tomorrow.

Places like Six Flags are where the phrase “hurry up and wait” apply.

I was able to go there Thursday, and it occurred to me late in the afternoon that I had spent most of my time waiting in line. Luckily, I got to go totally free gratis (lunch included); I don’t think I would have had as much fun had I paid full price for the trip. Standing around and waiting isn’t so bad when you aren’t paying for it.

Thursday was the first time I’d been in about 15 years, so I had no idea what was there and where it was. As we walked in the main gate, there were various Looney Tunes characters waving and giving hug. Porky Pig was getting no love, though. Luckily for him, a little girl took pity on his stuttering ass and gave him a hug.

The first ride Mrs. Communist and I hit was the Batman roller coaster. I’m guessing it was identical to the one at Great America, which we had visited about a decade while in Chicago for a friend’s wedding.

We then stood in line about 20 minutes for the Ninja, and when we were next-to-next in line, they had to shut it down because one of the bins to stash personal effects had blown onto the track. But of course, the operators couldn’t fetch it; instead we had to wait for someone from “maintenance” to walk over to where the operator was standing, bend down to the track and pick up the bin. I didn’t understand the need to divide the labor, but whatever; dude from “maintenance” got a nice ovation from the anxious masses.

It appeared that the cars on the Ninja were the same Fiero-looking ones from when the ride opened 20-something years ago.

After the first two rides, I was glad I hadn’t had anything to eat beforehand. The loops and helices of those coasters combined with the lingering aftereffects of the previous evening’s beer drinking left me a bit woozy afterward.

I soon regained my bearings and partook of the free tube steaks, chicken sammiches and popsicles provided our party. After filling my growling tummy, I was ready to kick some more amusement park ass.

The next ride we hit was something called The Boss, which I guess was added a few years ago. It made the Batman and Ninja look like something from Happy Hollow at the Illinois State Fair. The former two coasters had the crazy loops and whatnot, but they were over in like a minute. But The Boss was the most thrilling 2 minutes 45 seconds you could spend at Six Flags. It had two stomach-in-your-throat drops and a couple of wicked banked turns that you took at like 66 mph. I actually managed to hang onto my camera to take this video:

Thunder River was next to sort of detox from the adrenaline rush of The Boss. It was the same as I remembered from 1992. I believe I got the most soaked out of all the people on our raft. I didn’t think to put my feets up on the little footrest, and after the first big splash the bottom of our raft was ankle deep with water. Of course I was wearing my red suede Pumas, and not only did I have to walk around the rest of the day in wet sneakers, but both my feets were dyed red when I got home and finally took my sneakers off.

After Thunder River, we found the Xcalibur, which I took to be some medieval torture device. See, I get nauseous taking my kids on the carousel at White Oaks Mall. This thing spins at ground level, then slowly rises like 100 feet in the air until you are facing straight down. All while spinning. Uh, no thanks. I let Mrs. C go with another person we were with. I held her hat and sunglasses.

After that, we had time to stand in line for one more ride, and we chose the Superman Tower of Power. This thing combined two major phobias into one pants-pooping thrill ride: fear of heights and fear of falling. You sit facing out and go straight up 230 feet. Mrs. C doesn’t handle heights well, and the second our car started up the tower, panic set in. Once we finally got to the top, she was like “Dear Jesus, I want off now! Just let me off now!” I was too preoccupied with not soiling my own drawers to laugh at her.

It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad had the operator just dropped us when we got to the top. But when you’re suspended 230 feet up, every second feels like an hour. He let us stew for a bit and finally said “Here we go!” Except we didn’t quite go. It was more like: click… click… click… clickfaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllll.

Three seconds later we were back on solid ground. One of the people we were with who didn’t go said he could hear Mrs. C screaming all the way up and all the way down. Well, he said that after he finally stopped laughing.

Dude, Saturday was a great day for walking around the Old Capitol Art Fair looking at overpriced wall trinkets. I brought my camera along, but I ended up taking more pictures of buildings than I did of the fair. Art is my life.

On our walk over to the square, we literally almost ran into a Springfield police officer rocking one of the city’s new Segways. Mrs. Communist and I were much more interested than the kids.

We stopped at Del’s Popcorn Shop to get the kids a snack, and out in front was the organ-playing blind guy whose name unfortunately escapes me:

When we walked into Del’s, he was playing “Downtown” by Petula Clark; when we walked out, he was burning through “Like A Virgin” by Madonna. Awesome.

Finally, we made it up to the square. We decided (and by “we,” I mean I nodded my head in agreement) that the kids should go do the kids tent thing while they were still relatively unhungry and uncrabby. The Boy could have cared less; he just wanted to eat his popcorn. But The Girl managed to pull some fanciful earrings for her recently pierced noggin flaps:

Then we began walking around in earnest. We visited booth after booth of nicely done, prohibitively expensive artwork. No offense to the art community out there, but after about two of these booths, your stuff all looks the same to me. If it’s not about baseball or bicycles, I’m not interested.

I did see a garden trinket that made me laugh, though:

It needs a comma after the “grow.”

All that copy-editing the artwork made me hungry. That and the powerful, enticing smell of garlic wafting down Seventh Street. I rolled the dice on a plate of chili cheese fries and was rewarded for my mad decision-making skillz. Shit was good. (Related aside: Uploading the photo to Flickr made me hungry.)

After a couple of hours of walking around and being told “Don’t touch that” over and over, the kids basically had had enough. Besides, they were more captivated by the rush of cool air coming up from the grate at Seventh and Washington:

Clearly, it was time to go. Plus, the combination of a lack of coffee and dealing with douchebag fairgoers who thought nothing of blocking your path while gawking instead of actually going inside a booth to look had fostered a headache. I was ready to go, too.

On Monday, my dad was inducted into the Springfield Sports Hall of Fame as a Friend of Sport for his more than 30-year service officiating baseball, football and basketball. If you’re from the area and you played organized baseball, from Little League to college level, chances are he officiated at least one of your games.

He is one of the best, most well-liked and respected officials this area has ever seen, second only to Al Barlick as far as I’m concerned. He’d never say that, though, so it’s up to others to do it.

I took a video of his speech, but for some reason YouTube hates freedom the video my camera takes, so I will just link to the .AVI file.

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I had these grandiose plans to be a Johnny-on-the-spot with my camera, taking all kinds of photos, Springfield Scene magazine style, of the assembled local sportserati.

You know what they say about best-laid plans. The evening started out in a Crowne Plaza suite, where there were various yellow beers in cans. Then we went downstairs to the ballroom level for the pre-ceremony schmoozefest, where I found that they had sweet, sweet Guinness on draft. That just about ended my evening right there. This photo of Fred Hickman, the other Friend of Sport inducted Monday, illustrates this point nicely:

Luckily, my overarching politeness kept me from getting up to get more Guinness once the ceremony started. It would be kind of rude for a drunk to stumble out for more beer during an inductee’s speech, so I was able to dry out a little bit, especially during one speech in particular.

Most of the speeches were short, two to three minutes or so. But one inductee had no use for such constraints. Southeast graduates of a certain age know all about Bob Kyes, whether you had him as a teacher or not. And everyone who was fortunate enough to have a class with Mr. Kyes will tell you that he was their favorite teacher, and everyone will have a favorite Mr. Kyes story.

Anyway, as typical of Mr. Kyes, he got to telling stories, most of which had nothing to do with sports or halls of fame, and ended up going on for about 15 minutes. But he did, as typical of Mr. Kyes, have his audience eating out of the palm of his hand. He’s a charismatic cat.

Keynote speaker Bob Trumpy had a nice speech as well, although he tried to sneak in an O.J. Simpson joke, which went over like the proverbial fart in church.

Tasteless jokes aside, congratulations to this year’s Hall-of-Fame inductees, especially my dad. For more photos, check out my Flickr set.

Sooo… how ’bout that great weather, huh? Pretty nice out.

Today was too nice to not get outside and enjoy the weather. So I packed up The Boy and went to Hot Young Moms Washington Park. I took a boatload of photos, but most of them are wack. What you see are the two best.

And yes, I know The Boy is devastatingly handsome. He gets that from Mrs. Communist.

Even if you don’t leave home, time off from work is refreshing because you get a chance to tackle stuff that a full-time work sked doesn’t permit.

That “stuff” obviously didn’t include this Web log, which has kind of sat dormant for a week now. So here we are, writing the obligatory mail-it-in post to remind the two people who have read this that this blog still exists.

I actually did leave town for a couple of days, taking the family to Indianapolis for some indoor waterpark and museum fun.

If you haven’t been, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is well worth the three-plus hour drive to Indy, though I do recommend getting tickets in advance, whether online or through some sort of tourism package. We obtained tickets the latter way and walked right in, bypassing what must have been 75-100 people in line.

Among the many fantastic exhibits are the two surefire things to capture a kid’s fancy: trains and dinosaurs. In fact, as you turn the corner for the free (!) parking garage, you see a dinosaur “escaping” the museum.

Overhead as you descend into the Dinosphere exhibit are a few pteranodon skeletons suspended in flight.

And what would any dinosaur exhibit be without a couple of tyrannosaurs attacking a hapless triceratops?

Of course, there is so much more to the dinosaur exhibit than just a few well-placed bones. There are tons of hands-on activities to engage kids and their passion for the terrible lizards. And there is so much more to the museum than just the Dinosphere. There are four more floors of fun that await you and your young learners with all kinds of other exhibits, from the aforementioned trains to a construction exhibit, undersea life, fantastic glass art and more.

Speaking of fantastic glass art…

Check out my Flickr set for more photos.

This motorcycle was too gnarly not to take a picture of. I just happened to have grabbed my camera before leaving for the evening’s erranding.

The people in the car next to me stopped at Veterans Parkway and Old Jacksonville Road (Dudeguy above was heading north on the Vet) saw me scramble out my window to grab the shot. The woman driving asked me how much I thought that bike cost. I said, “At least $15,000.” She concurred.

Her man-passenger said something like “Hrrmmph. Gotta be more than that,” while giving me a stern, unflinching glare. I’m guessing he didn’t like the Radiohead I was blasting as I pulled up to the stoplight.

If he would have asked, I would have turned it down. I’m a reasonable man. Get off my case.