Cookie Crumbs

Life is all about fun little surprises Well, fun for me at least.

Several year's ago while I was at the University of Utah, I lived with a couple of really good guys. In fact, all of my roommates during my time in SLC were fantastic. One of my roommates was as nice as they come. He was one of those guys that you would hear described as one that you would want your daughter or sister to marry, he was that nice a guy.

One such day while we lived together, I came home for lunch and made myself a tuna sandwich. You see, during my college days I tried to make lunch as quickly as possible so as to not cut into my study (video game) time. So I made a tuna sandwich, probably had some chips and a drink and headed back to my room to, ahem, study.

My roommate came home shortly thereafter and saw my plate of crumbs sitting on the counter.

He must have figured that I'd made cookies or something, but just did not save him any. This would've been an unlikely scenario given that most of our food was community, but there's no telling what goes through someones mind who sees a plate of crumbs and decides to take action.

With nary a smell or a sniff, he scooped as many of the crumbs into his hand as he possibly could so as to get the maximum benefit of the taste. As you already know, they werent' cookie crumbs. Imagine his surprise when he got a mouthful of tuna crumbs and not cookie crumbs.

He was a pretty good sport about it. He came back to my room and confirmed with me that I had indeed not made any cookies. We had a good laugh at his miscalculation and chagrin over his attempt to nibble on the few morsels of tuna sandwich I had left on my plate unwittingly.

Like I said, life is full of fun surprises. You can never assume that those crumbs you're scooping up are cookies and not something else, but if you do...scoop at your own risk!

Happy Monday!

Mix Tapes

It’s where the Beach Boys and the Beastie Boys converge. Where Garth Brooks meets Skee-Lo…where Firehouse’s “Love of a Lifetime” can be preceded by Dire Straights “Walk of Life,” and followed by “Ice Ice Baby.” It has evolved to take many forms and has many names, but nothing will ever be as awesome as the original Mix Tape.

Being able to have all of MY favorite tunes on one tape for my listening enjoyment was a radical concept when I first encountered it. But, it quickly became a mainstay for me during my childhood and teenage years.

The thing that made mix tapes so rewarding was that they were something you put in a lot of time to create. So, once you were finished, you knew you had a quality product. Additionally, if you ever made one for your favorite guy or girl or even for a friend, they could know that this was a well-thought out gift. And let’s be honest, these artists are often better at expressing what we want to say on our behalf via song than we are. What girl wouldn’t melt at the sound of Mr. Big’s “I’m the One Who Wants to Be With You,” or REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight this Feelin”? Nothing says let’s go steady quite like Chicago’s “You’re The Inspiration.”

Likewise, when you and your boyfriend or girlfriend were going through a rough patch, nothing says, let’s put this petty fight behind us like Air Supply’s “All Out of Love,” or “Here I Am.”

Creating a mix tape was a chore in and of itself. Collecting all the tapes, coming up with the perfect order, recording them on your duel cassette boom box, not an easy task in the least! Not to mention making sure you have enough tape space at the end of each side so as to not cut off a rockin Huey Lewis and the News or Michael Jackson tune.

Naming mixes was always a good time as well. I would often name my mixes after one of the songs that summarized the contents therein. Names such as “Sledge Hammer,” “Can’t Touch This,” and “Bad,” often donned the white strip on side A of my mixes. Plus, you could also name each side of the mix like “This Side,” and “That Side.”

Upon completion of a mix tape, I would spend hours up on hours listening to them on my awesome yellow walkman. We made sure there were enough batteries around so that the music never stopped for too long!

Since the inception of the mix tape, several advancements have been made in mix technology. People can now create mix CDs, and even create personalized playlists on their iPod or MP3 player. But you know and I know that nothing will top the original. No drag and drop gizmo allowing you to listen to thousands of songs all in a row will ever be able to match the pure sound of a hiss of the beginning of a mix tape, the awkwardness of the transitions as you try to make each song fade in and out smoothly, and the simple joy found in the completion of and subsequent grooving to and excellent mix tape.

Blazing the Trail

When I was in the 6th grade, I had Typhoid. I also had a broken leg, diphtheria, dysentery, and many other deadly diseases. Sadly, most of the time these diseases resulted in my passing somewhere along the plains as my wagon train consisting of myself along with close friends MC Hammer, Hulk Hogan, Vanilla Ice, Macho Man, and many others pressed forward trying to make it across the country to the great Pacific Northwest. I am speaking of course of my various journeys along The Oregon Trail.

It was one of the first video games available for the old McIntosh computers that my elementary school had and it came out on those big floppy disks.

In the game, you could leave from any number of places depending on how much money and supplies you wanted to have. I often left from Boston because that is where the wealthy came from and I figured that had I been around during the 1800s, I certainly would've been wealthy.

During the course of the game you are faced with challenges of illness, weather slowing down your pace, running out of food and supplies, losing massive amounts of clothing or oxen due to a capsized wagon train while trying to cross the Missouri. These are tough challenges for me when I fire up the game at age 30, so you can only imagine how they were for me in 1992 at age 13. However, should I ever need to pack my family up and move them across the country in a wagon train, I am better equipped because of the time I spent playing the game.

What made this game so great was that you could hunt for more food, shooting a bear or a moose with a single shot from your regular old rifle...which should come in handy if I am ever in the woods and encounter bear. I know I can take him down with one shot from a poorly aimed gun and you can't learn that kind of stuff in a history book. You could trade for supplies or purchase more supplies if you had the means to do so. And, you delat with the very real possibility that a member of your wagon train, Andre the Giant, could die of Cholera. Powerful and invaluable lessons for a kid to learn! Who knew death and despear could be so fun and educational?

It also had a very interesting wrinkle that if a member of your party passed, you could write whatever you wanted on his or her tombstone. Then, when you played the game again, you might just stumble upon your own tombstone and would be given the option to read it. One such tombstone I recall reading said: "Here lies Andrew, 'Don't fake the funk on the nasty dunk.' "Remarkable.

The Oregon Trail was truly a great game, but I would be remiss if I didn't also shout out to the game that single handedly taught me multiplication: through fear of being eaten: Number Munchers.

Hey Dude

It's a little wild and a little strange, when you make your home out on the range...

From time to time on this blog I'm going to take a look back at the great shows from my childhood and I thought I'd start with one of the classics!

Hey Dude ran on Nickelodeon from 1989 to 1991 (65 episodes) (I would've been 10-12 years old at the time) and I am confident that I have seen every single episode of this show.

The show is about an Easterner, Mr. Ernst, who buys a ranch out near Tuscan, Arizona. The staff included Ted, Danny, Brad, and Melody along with Buddy and his faithful dog...and Lucy, a ranch hand with a heart of gold. Another character named Kyle was later added to the show to be heart-throb competition for Ted when he returned from summer school, but I think we always knew that Ted had Brad's heart.

Christine Taylor (Melody) was the only one that really went on to do anything of note. The others had bit parts over the years, but nothing really matched what the future Mrs. Ben Stiller would accomplish.

My favorite episode, one I remember to this day, is the one where some scoundrel cowboys try to rob the ranch and they hold several people hostage in the process. But, Mr. Ernst and crew find their way out of that jam as they would many others.

So, everyone join me in salluting a great show from my childhood, Hey Dude, with a "Yippi Ki Yi Yea!"

To read more about Hey Dude, click here. Otherwise, enjoy the video below.