Any way you slice it, this post is Spam...and disjointed...and random. I hope you have a hankerin' for by-products right now...'cause here we go.

I promise that there is a dividend in the post right above this one...so hang on yall.
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LOOK WHAT I FOUND OUT TODAY!



There is a new manufacturer that has been going around and buying all the dead-file licenses for some old school Hasbro and Mattel toys and is producing them again.



Do yall remember these???

I do. I can't beleive it. Some of these toys haven't been manufactured for 30 years. We get to have them in the store for Christmas this year.



I'm freaking out. This is going to be a fun Christmas for Heliotrope.



Sababa Toys just paid mega-bucks for dozens of old toy licenses. We just placed an order for these for Christmas. How cool is THAT?

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I've been working, yall. I'm on a mission. I want Heliotrope to be the mostest funnest and beautiful store a person could ever hope to walk into. When I see people come back to visit us again and again and plop back on our sofas and read our books and play with our games...well, it makes me smile and it makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Every day it's amazing to me to see one of the very first lines we wrote in our business plan 3 years ago come to fruition..."It's okay to have too much fun". I never take this for granted.

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T

I really like the Saturday Night Blog Crawl Thingy. It seems like every week, someone posts a rare jewel that really connects with me. I love all the familiar stuff, but when Streamers share more obscure tunes and artists...I really get a kick.

When Belle posted "Candy" by Big Maybelle, I listened to that song over and over again that night and prowled around Rhapsody all the next day listening to her and Ruth Brown and Big Mama Thornton and Koko Taylor all day on the outside speakers on the porch.

It's like Brother Scratch is in my head sometimes. He builds some playlists sometimes and I just think..."Wow...that's exactly what I want to hear right now." It's uncanny.

Colo, Prank, and Dixie post uncommon and awesome videos. I get so into enjoying the stuff that they share, that I forget to comment sometimes.

Raspberrytoast shares a kind of obscure and new stuff that I love. If memory serves me, she posted Cibo Mato one week. I always cruise by her place to see what she is up to.

And...then you have John the Squabler. He seems to always have something interesting that connects with my musical sensibility and history. He's indirectly responsible for this post. He posted about Yes this week and that made me spiral backwards to the 9th grade and opened up a whole can of teen angst worms with me.

(I didn't mean to leave anybody out...I really do love to cruise around and see what everybody has posted...these were just the first few that came to mind.)

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While I was reading John's post about Yes, I immediately thought about Rick Wakeman's "The Six Wives of Henry The Eighth" that was released in 1973, when I was in the 9th grade. To say that I played this album alot when I was in the 9th grade would be an understatement. I obssessed with this album on the Radio Shack turntable in the dark of my bedroom that year. This album was the main reason my mom bought me headphones. I was curious enough to see if by some chance it was on Rhapsody and Imeem. Oddly enough, it is.

I haven't heard this in over thirty years. Listening to it again for the first time in 33 years has dredged up a lot of shit from that year for me. I started thinking that the 9th grade was my "powder keg" year growing up. (heeeey...did i just coin a phrase? hmmm)

Anyways...I am sitting here listening to "Wives" and my mind drifts right back to that year.

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In the 9th grade....

I was in my last year at a Christian junior high school.

Being there for three years gradually and systematicaly almost completely destroyed my Christian faith. (I got it back after a couple of decades)

I hated my kinky curly hair. I used to wrap tape around my head at night so that my hair would look straight the next morning. As you can imagine, this...uh...didn't work. I thought it did. The result was a disaster, but I went to school anyway. I wish I had pictures!

In the backest deepest darkest corners of my mind, I knew I was gay. I didn't even know what to call it. I just knew it was there. I was terrified.

That year, I played a mean, despicable prank on one of my best friends that I still regret. I can't get over that to this day. I can usually think of myself as a good person, except when I think about that. It got a lot of laughs, but in the long run, it broke a piece of my heart that has never healed.

I started playing around with drugs that year. (ok...so that part was kinda fun) aaaaanyways.....

My cousin was killed in a car wreck that year. It was the first time that death really hit home with me. Becky and a car full of her friends were on their way home from a concert...and they were all stoned out of their minds. They entered I75 from an exit and were all killed instantly in a head on collision.

I got into a lot of trouble in school. I never got into into a lot of trouble before that year or after that year. For some reason, I was angry at everyone for a whole year. (It passed.)

My mom was late mailing the tuition check one month and I had to take one to the office one morning. This was the first time in my life that I really realized what sacrifices she was making for me.

I realized that I wasn't good enough on the court to become a tennis pro and that I wasn't quite smart enough and we were so poor that I wasn't going to become an attorney. It was the year that I decided not to have any career goals whatsoever.

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Damn...I just painted a dismal picture of my 9th grade year. I thought it was. I thought my whole world was crashing in. Good thing I learned how to perfect the art of denial. Is a dab of denial such a bad thing, really? I mean...it got me through high school and college and the dividends were notoriety and popularity.

Denial rocks! Now I don't even know what this post was supposed to be about. Oh yeah...Rick Wakeman's "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth". Dang...this album is awesome.......still awesome.

Playin' around with this site. This is "Breaking Glass" from David Bowie's album "Low". Low is still one of my favorite Bowie albums, but I remember having to hear it a few times before I started really digging it. There's a lot of Brian Eno influence on it.

I like how the site works, but there's not a whole lot on there.

(There are two places in the code that you have to change to "false" for autostart if you don't want embeds to play automatically))

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Will someone pleeeeeeease tell Matthew McConaughey to stop with these incessant phone calls at all hours, asking me to spend the weekend with him at the Ramada Inn in Acapulco???
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I mean really...it's getting a little embarrassing.
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Don't make me go take out a restraining order on your ass, Mr. McConaughey.
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T

...I have made a monumental decision...after almost two years of debating, I have finally picked the biz-bag that I am going to buy.

I have a shopping disorder. I can buy a house or an automobile pretty much "on the spot" with not much forethought, but when it comes to the little things, I process, process, PROCESS...way too much. What the f*ck is wrong with me??? I saw a house I liked...I said "buy it". I laid eyes on the last car we bought...I said "OK..let's get it".

BUT...I spend hours standing in front of the canned chili section in Krogers evaluating all the options...beans/no beans/hot/mild/organic/etc etc etc. Then I get to the Little Debbie aisle. SOMEBODY JUST PLEASE SLAP ME.....I want them all. That's why Marc does the grocery shopping for us. I usually forget my cell phone, so I can't just dail up Marc and ask him if we need toilet paper or other essentials. I do not function well in a grocery store if left on my own.

After aisle 5, I freak out and eventually end up at the check-out with 15 cans of chili, 11 boxes of Little Debbies, dog toys, 3 boxes of Captain Crunch With Crunchberries, an "O" Magazine, a "Martha Stewart Living" Magazine, eight 99 cent White Trash Frozen Pizzas, and a 24 pack of Bud Lite.

I shouldn't be left unsupervised for any length of time, especially in a grocery store with a debit card.

The good news...I finally picked my new biz bag...and I dare say....it's F*CKING AWESOME....

T
Posted by Biggie T at 2:13 AM - 35 Comments   Add a Comment