The year was 1995. Katie and I were married that August and were living in Provo, Utah that fall, where we attended the BYU. To help with rent and to help Katie’s family, we lived in the basement apartment of Katie’s grandfather's house. It was a yellow, two-story house on 50 East, right behind the Brick Oven, if you’re familiar with that Italian eatery. Rather capacious for the location, and quite outdated in comparison to the new student apartments across the street, it looked out of place.
Katie’s grandfather had experienced a number of strokes and in his old age and was not the picture of health. He could barely move on his own and required others to help him bathe, eat, and change his clothes. He didn’t need any help going to the bathroom, however, because he did that wherever and whenever he pleased.
Though the bedrooms were on the second story, to help Grandpa get around, he and his sleeping arrangements had been moved to the main floor. The four bedrooms upstairs were spacious, along with a full bathroom and several sizeable closets that were used for either storage or just left empty. With nobody living up there, and no maids, the upstairs was always very still and dusty. It was like nobody had been up there since 1857, when the Saints built the first two-story house in Provo. Sometimes, when I was the only one home (besides Grandpa), I liked to go upstairs and pretend I ran an old museum. I would give tours and explain how the rooms were used to house all 18 of George Soderborg’s children, and how the oldest children would actually select one of the roomy closets as their bedroom, just for the sake of having some privacy! (Then I’d chuckle to myself, assuming the folks taking the tour would equally be amused at my witty monologue that juxtaposed the children of centuries past with the children of today, and how they really aren’t that different after all.)
The main floor featured the front room, where Grandpa spent most of his time watching television and spitting out his pills that we had given him about 10 minutes earlier, with a dining room and a kitchen behind the front room. Off to the side was a parlor that had been turned into Grandpa’s room. And our basement apartment was directly under his bedroom. There was a set of stairs that went up from the back of our apartment into the kitchen on the main floor, and that was the path we usually traveled to go up and check on Grandpa and take care of him.
One night, in the middle of the night, Grandpa fell out of bed. Turned out he was coherent enough to recognize he had to go to the bathroom and wanted to try and make it on his own, bless him. Unfortunately, he got as far as sitting up in bed…then he sort of just fell out of it and onto the floor. The thud woke me up and I went upstairs, hoisted him up off the floor, checked his diaper, and put him back in bed. I mention this only so you understand how clearly one could hear things going down in Grandpa’s room.
We had lived in the apartment just shy of two months when one of the most unsettling things took place one evening, ‘round midnight.
Katie and I were going to bed and had most likely just finished chatting about how nobody could possibly ever be in love as much as us, and even though we were newlyweds, we would totally act the same giddy way our whole lives, because we were awesome and we would always find each others’ belches endearing and everything we did would be cute forever and ever. We had been lying there in the dark for just a few minutes – you know those minutes, when it’s late, dark, and quiet, and you are juuuust about to doze off, but still about 15% alert. Somewhere between conscious and unconscious. I was almost there, when suddenly, there were five distinct, deliberate, and pounding footsteps running across the floor above us. We both shot up in bed, looked at each other, and shouted “What was THAT?!” I’m telling you, it couldn’t have been better choreographed if we were on a movie set.
I physically jumped out of bed. “Did you hear that?!”
“Was that right above us?!” asked a panicked and newlywed-cute Katie.
I understood what she meant – she was saying. “Isn’t that Grandpa’s room?”
“That couldn’t have been Grandpa,” I said. “I hoisted him off the floor the other night. He’s like an enormous sack of Hogi Yogi. That was something else. Somebody is in the house.”
Having almost drifted off for the night and then to be shocked into a state of panic, my adrenaline was already hummin’. I ran up the back stairs, through the kitchen, and into Grandpa’s room. He didn’t budge. Still snoring, wrapped under his blankets, he was unaware of anything. I did a lap around the main floor – through the front room, the dining room, the kitchen – I saw no signs of anything. My guts imploded, I grabbed the fireplace poker, and I took off up the stairs. I could almost hear the people yelling at my movie screen “Don’t go up the stairs!!!!! You’ll kill yourself!!!! WHY is he going up the stairs?! Oh, now I HOPE he dies if he’s THAT stupid!”
I didn’t turn on any lights, for fear of giving away my exact location to the intruder. I ran into every bedroom and closet, ripping the doors open, each time fully expecting to confront somebody. I had never been so hopped up on adrenaline. When I tore open the final door to reveal absolutely nothing, I paused only for a second before the horrible thought came to me, “He’s run down the back stairs into my apartment and has Katie!” Faster than I had run up the stairs, I ran back down, through the kitchen, down another flight of stairs and into my little apartment. There was Katie, sitting up in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.
“Who is it? Who was there?”
“There’s nobody there. There is not one soul in this house except us and Grandpa.”
I went back up and took a more calculated and leisure trip through the house, paying more attention to detail and looking to see if there were any small signs of disturbance. I couldn’t see a thing.
It was a few months after that, when we were sharing this experience with some of Katie’s family that we were told Katie’s uncle used to live in that very basement apartment, years before us. Used to. He had moved back home, due to some struggles with emotional and mental imbalances. He had struggled for year with some very real bouts of depression. He killed himself in that very apartment.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
A Trip to the Coroner
Two years ago I was serving in my LDS ward as the president of the Young Men’s organization. As most of you are aware, this involves teaching lessons on Sundays, planning activities for Wednesdays, and having sixteen year-olds come by your house at any given moment without prior warning, whether your pregnant wife is wearing pants or not. (Have you BEEN in Las Vegas during the summer? Pants are superfluous.)
It was the witching month of October and we were planning some activities for the month. One of the young men suggested we visit the Clark County Coroner’s Office, under the guise of “studying different professions in the Las Vegas Valley,” but really so that we could all get properly freaked out.
I had never seen the young men get so excited about an activity. Except when they planned a Scouting “High Adventure” camp to California that included Six Flags Magic Mountain, a Dodger game, a trip to the beach, and a hamburger eating contest at Tommy’s. But I digress.
We all became quite giddy about this idea. Somewhere in my mind – the part of my mind where I am still a teenager – I imagined this whole thing to be, in a word, AWESOME. The next day I called the office to arrange a tour. I talked to Steve, the “Head Coroner,” and asked if it would be okay for us to take a tour. Unfazed, he agreed. I told him that we would like to come by around 7 p.m., and he explained that he wouldn’t be there, but he would let the “Night Coroner” know we were coming by.
We pulled up to the Coroner’s Office just as the sun was setting. The parking lot was deserted. The building looked decrepit. And this was not the wealthiest neighborhood in town. I imagine they set up the Coroner’s Office here so that they could be near business. The way ice cream trucks drive through young neighborhoods. I looked at this building and thought, “The dead people in that building are the lucky ones.”
We walked up to the front door and knocked. And knocked. And knocked. Nobody. I pulled out my cell phone and called the number, and a gentleman answered. I assumed it was the Night Coroner that Steve had told me about.
“Hello?” he said.
“Yes, hello…John?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, this is Ken Craig.”
“Yes.” (Clearly my name was not getting me in the door.)
“Uhm, did Steve tell you I would be by with some youth from my church?”
“No.” (Clearly this was the end of our discussion.)
“Oh. Well, we’re here.”
“Why?”
“Well, we are looking at different professions throughout the valley, and the youth were interested in seeing the County Coroner’s Office.”
“Why?” (Completely incredulous.)
“It’s just something different than anything they’ve studied, and they’re interested.”
(Long pause.) “Why?”
“Are you going to let us in?”
“Uhm…I’ll be there in a second.”
We waited. He finally opened the door and actually peeked out at us before opening the door all the way. Like HE should be afraid of US. Dude, you work with dead bodies for a living! He stepped out into the twilight, and you should have seen this guy. He looked like he needed a good chiropractor. His alignment was off, and one shoulder was higher than the other. Also, and I am not making this up, one of his eyes wandered…just a bit. If he had wringed his hands together and mumbled “Walk this way,” I would have wet myself right there in front of teenagers.
“Well, let’s enter through the back, where the gurneys are brought in.”
(Gulp) “Uh…okay.”
Once inside, we are standing in what is essentially a garage. Where the ambulances and other vehicles back in to drop off the gurneys. The gurneys with dead bodies. The guy half-throws his arms in the air and says, “Well, what is it you’re interested in hearing about? The science of it? The forensics?” And just like that, our young men turn yellow. Suddenly they are mute, and they are looking at the ground, shuffling their feet, as if they were at a Stake Dance. Now I feel like some kind of sick-o. Like this guy’s suspicions of how weird we are, are suddenly validated. “So, you came to see the dead bodies, did you?! Well LOOK AT THEM! DID YOU GET A GOOD LOOK!? SICK-O!”
So I start making-up questions. And this guy holds nothing back. Launches into everything from which bodies come to the coroner’s office (homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths), who investigates them, weird deaths he’s seen, how the bodies are weighed, etc. And then…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…he takes us into The Cooler. There are about half a dozen dead bodies on gurneys, a wafer thin sheet covering them. I can still see some of them to this day. A female with long red hair that looked like it had been brushed up – so that her face was covered, but you saw all this red hair coming out the top. She had to have been in her thirties, I’m guessing. Long fingernails. Next to her was a man with bullet holes down the side of his body. And if the visuals weren’t bad enough…the smell. My gosh, the smell. It gave your gag reflexes a workout.
Behind the room we were in was another cooler room. The Cooler Part 2: This Time It’s Personal. This room was for bodies that had not yet been identified and had been there for quite some time.
“What’s the longest you’ve kept an unidentified body?” I asked.
“Well,” he started, “we got a new Head Coroner last year, and when he found out we had bodies in there for OVER 20 YEARS he ordered us to have them buried.”
“I see.” I answered. “Who’s ready for that hamburger eating contest?”
He showed us another room where the Coroners work on bodies that are unidentifiable when they are brought in. To the point where families are not allowed to get an up-close look-see. There is video equipment in the room, and the coroner works on the body while the family watches from another room, removed from the upsetting nature of being so close.
Afterwards he took us into the business office area of the building and gave us a good talking to. He explained to the boys that it takes a special kind of person to go into coroner work. (Very special, I’m sure.) And he discouraged them from doing it, talking about horrible things that he’s seen. He answered a few questions from us, and then got a phone call about a body coming in. How many total did that make for a Wednesday in October? Seventeen. Seventeen bodies in one day. And that was before the night was over. Take THAT CSI.
Our trip that year had become legendary among the young men. And this year, of course, there was an entirely new crop of young men anxious to be equally freaked-out. So we called and made the appointment. You could feel the energy on the way down to the place. When we got there, they escorted us all into a large room, showed us a short video, told us about the profession, and that was it. No tour. No dead bodies. Apparently we had caught Night Coroner John off-guard that fateful night two years ago, and not really knowing what else to do, he gave us a tour that the public is not generally privy to.
When I went up to our speaker at the end of his presentation I said, “How come we didn’t get the tour? We were here two years ago with John, and he gave us a full tour.”
“Who?” he asked, his eyes getting big.
“John,” I answered. “John, the Night Coroner. He gave us a tour two years ago.”
“That’s impossible,” the man said, “we don’t have a Night Coroner.”
“Well, you did then. He had one shoulder higher than the other, wandering eye, mustache…”
The man’s face went white and he sat down. “You’re talking ‘bout Ol’ John McNeil,” he whispered. He was a Night Coroner all right. He died…10 years ago!” (Insert Psycho music.)
Okay, so I made up that last part about John being dead 10 years ago. But could you imagine if he were? That would be AWESOME!
It was the witching month of October and we were planning some activities for the month. One of the young men suggested we visit the Clark County Coroner’s Office, under the guise of “studying different professions in the Las Vegas Valley,” but really so that we could all get properly freaked out.
I had never seen the young men get so excited about an activity. Except when they planned a Scouting “High Adventure” camp to California that included Six Flags Magic Mountain, a Dodger game, a trip to the beach, and a hamburger eating contest at Tommy’s. But I digress.
We all became quite giddy about this idea. Somewhere in my mind – the part of my mind where I am still a teenager – I imagined this whole thing to be, in a word, AWESOME. The next day I called the office to arrange a tour. I talked to Steve, the “Head Coroner,” and asked if it would be okay for us to take a tour. Unfazed, he agreed. I told him that we would like to come by around 7 p.m., and he explained that he wouldn’t be there, but he would let the “Night Coroner” know we were coming by.
We pulled up to the Coroner’s Office just as the sun was setting. The parking lot was deserted. The building looked decrepit. And this was not the wealthiest neighborhood in town. I imagine they set up the Coroner’s Office here so that they could be near business. The way ice cream trucks drive through young neighborhoods. I looked at this building and thought, “The dead people in that building are the lucky ones.”
We walked up to the front door and knocked. And knocked. And knocked. Nobody. I pulled out my cell phone and called the number, and a gentleman answered. I assumed it was the Night Coroner that Steve had told me about.
“Hello?” he said.
“Yes, hello…John?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, this is Ken Craig.”
“Yes.” (Clearly my name was not getting me in the door.)
“Uhm, did Steve tell you I would be by with some youth from my church?”
“No.” (Clearly this was the end of our discussion.)
“Oh. Well, we’re here.”
“Why?”
“Well, we are looking at different professions throughout the valley, and the youth were interested in seeing the County Coroner’s Office.”
“Why?” (Completely incredulous.)
“It’s just something different than anything they’ve studied, and they’re interested.”
(Long pause.) “Why?”
“Are you going to let us in?”
“Uhm…I’ll be there in a second.”
We waited. He finally opened the door and actually peeked out at us before opening the door all the way. Like HE should be afraid of US. Dude, you work with dead bodies for a living! He stepped out into the twilight, and you should have seen this guy. He looked like he needed a good chiropractor. His alignment was off, and one shoulder was higher than the other. Also, and I am not making this up, one of his eyes wandered…just a bit. If he had wringed his hands together and mumbled “Walk this way,” I would have wet myself right there in front of teenagers.
“Well, let’s enter through the back, where the gurneys are brought in.”
(Gulp) “Uh…okay.”
Once inside, we are standing in what is essentially a garage. Where the ambulances and other vehicles back in to drop off the gurneys. The gurneys with dead bodies. The guy half-throws his arms in the air and says, “Well, what is it you’re interested in hearing about? The science of it? The forensics?” And just like that, our young men turn yellow. Suddenly they are mute, and they are looking at the ground, shuffling their feet, as if they were at a Stake Dance. Now I feel like some kind of sick-o. Like this guy’s suspicions of how weird we are, are suddenly validated. “So, you came to see the dead bodies, did you?! Well LOOK AT THEM! DID YOU GET A GOOD LOOK!? SICK-O!”
So I start making-up questions. And this guy holds nothing back. Launches into everything from which bodies come to the coroner’s office (homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths), who investigates them, weird deaths he’s seen, how the bodies are weighed, etc. And then…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…he takes us into The Cooler. There are about half a dozen dead bodies on gurneys, a wafer thin sheet covering them. I can still see some of them to this day. A female with long red hair that looked like it had been brushed up – so that her face was covered, but you saw all this red hair coming out the top. She had to have been in her thirties, I’m guessing. Long fingernails. Next to her was a man with bullet holes down the side of his body. And if the visuals weren’t bad enough…the smell. My gosh, the smell. It gave your gag reflexes a workout.
Behind the room we were in was another cooler room. The Cooler Part 2: This Time It’s Personal. This room was for bodies that had not yet been identified and had been there for quite some time.
“What’s the longest you’ve kept an unidentified body?” I asked.
“Well,” he started, “we got a new Head Coroner last year, and when he found out we had bodies in there for OVER 20 YEARS he ordered us to have them buried.”
“I see.” I answered. “Who’s ready for that hamburger eating contest?”
He showed us another room where the Coroners work on bodies that are unidentifiable when they are brought in. To the point where families are not allowed to get an up-close look-see. There is video equipment in the room, and the coroner works on the body while the family watches from another room, removed from the upsetting nature of being so close.
Afterwards he took us into the business office area of the building and gave us a good talking to. He explained to the boys that it takes a special kind of person to go into coroner work. (Very special, I’m sure.) And he discouraged them from doing it, talking about horrible things that he’s seen. He answered a few questions from us, and then got a phone call about a body coming in. How many total did that make for a Wednesday in October? Seventeen. Seventeen bodies in one day. And that was before the night was over. Take THAT CSI.
Our trip that year had become legendary among the young men. And this year, of course, there was an entirely new crop of young men anxious to be equally freaked-out. So we called and made the appointment. You could feel the energy on the way down to the place. When we got there, they escorted us all into a large room, showed us a short video, told us about the profession, and that was it. No tour. No dead bodies. Apparently we had caught Night Coroner John off-guard that fateful night two years ago, and not really knowing what else to do, he gave us a tour that the public is not generally privy to.
When I went up to our speaker at the end of his presentation I said, “How come we didn’t get the tour? We were here two years ago with John, and he gave us a full tour.”
“Who?” he asked, his eyes getting big.
“John,” I answered. “John, the Night Coroner. He gave us a tour two years ago.”
“That’s impossible,” the man said, “we don’t have a Night Coroner.”
“Well, you did then. He had one shoulder higher than the other, wandering eye, mustache…”
The man’s face went white and he sat down. “You’re talking ‘bout Ol’ John McNeil,” he whispered. He was a Night Coroner all right. He died…10 years ago!” (Insert Psycho music.)
Okay, so I made up that last part about John being dead 10 years ago. But could you imagine if he were? That would be AWESOME!
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Spookapalooza
My favorite time of the year has started. And by “time of year” I mean “October through December.” Each month and holiday its own, while incorporated into the remnants of the holiday before it, all coming to a head on Christmas morning. I love October, when autumn is setting in and the colors are changing and the weather cools. October has such a great mood to it. It’s practically palpable, this cornucopia of tastes, tints, and textures.
Along with the beautiful scenery and nostalgic recollections that come with October, it’s quite a spooky month. What, with Columbus Day and all. And don’t forget Halloween! So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I would dedicate my next few blog entries to some unsettling holiday story telling. Beware. These stories are not for the faint of heart. Mwu-ha…Mwu-hahahahah!!
Story #1: Home Alone 4: The Prequel
I was seven years old the first time I was left at home by myself. It was October of 1978, in a small suburban town in southern California. Abba ruled the airwaves and Star Wars ruled my dreams. Mr. Schwamm was my second grade teacher, and though his teaching abilities were called into question more than once by my parents, I enjoyed Friday afternoons when we had “dance time.” What a festival it was each Friday, full of music and courting. As long as you kept your finger out of your nose, pretty much anybody was willing to dance with you. There was no social awkwardness in second grade.
This particular Friday morning, on my way out the door, my mom kissed my cheek, handed me my Mork & Mindy lunchbox, and reminded me that when I got home that afternoon she wouldn’t be there. She was taking my brother and sisters to the dentist, and she would be back shortly after I got home. She carefully explained that she would leave the door on the side of the garage unlocked, and I could enter through that door and then take the connecting door from the garage into the house.
I was never a big fan of the garage – what, with the darkness and dampness and the hideous child-eating hobgoblin that lurked there on the off chance I was stupid enough to go into the garage by myself. (I was never that stupid. Before going into the garage, I would usually organize a posse of family members to accompany me.) But I was also excited for my bachelorhood and all that it would entail. Let’s see, drinks at 2:30, a light supper at 3:00, and the dancing that started in Mr. Schamm’s class that afternoon would then continue at Casa de Kenny Craig.
I nodded to my mom that I understood how to get from outside the house to the inside, and I headed off to school. As soon as I got to school I began to imagine our house. I knew my mom was still there, but in my mind, it was already sitting there, empty and silent. I thought about it on and off throughout the day, and each time I did, I imagined myself walking into this house that had been left alone for hours. Abandoned, really. It was a little unnerving.
I casually walked home from school that afternoon, not in a hurry to make any kind of destination. Kicked a pile of leaves or two, inspected some bugs in some trees, hummed the Peanuts theme song. I eventually arrived at my house and stared at it from the sidewalk for a few moments. I walked to the door on the side of the garage, and turned the handle. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and tried to casually walk through the garage as if the whole world was grading my performance of bravery. I stepped into the house…and it was even more still than I had imagined. It was an eerie quiet. I could almost hear myself sweat.
Once you entered the door from the garage into our house, the master bedroom was off to the right, and directly in front of you was a bathroom that you could enter from the hall, where I was, and that also lead into the master bedroom, so if you were sitting on the throne, you would be looking right into the master bedroom.
Relieved to finally have some much-needed peace and quiet for such an occasion, I dropped my little Levis and took a seat. It was then that I noticed my dad’s rifle, lying on the bed. I had seen it once or twice before, but it was a rare sighting. As children, we were generally discouraged from even looking at, and had never been allowed to touch it. The fact that it was so brazenly lying there almost startled me, and my first thought was “Ooooh…somebody’s in trouuuuuuubllllllle.” Taking my time doing my business, my eyes began to wonder around my parents’ room, and I started to take notice of how untidy their room was. Drawers pulled open, items from said drawers thrown about the room and covering the floor. I decided right then and there that I was not going to listen to even one more lecture from them on the state of my own room.
I completed my business, finished the paperwork…and flushed the toilet. At that precise moment, I heard a stampede of hurried footsteps right…over…my…head. My flushing had alerted intruders, who were now trapped upstairs, that somebody else besides them was in the house. Still not completely clear on what was happening, I ran alongside the footsteps above me until I saw three individuals run down the stairs and out the front door. Shaken (not stirred), I looked around the house and discovered that most things were in disarray – tipped over, emptied, broken, out of place. I was suddenly not so interested in being home alone, and I ran across the street to the safety of my friend Jeff, or more precisely, Jeff’s mom. We waited together until my mom came home. When I looked out the window of Jeff’s house and saw my mom’s car in the driveway, I walked over. She came running out of the house, looked right at me and said, “Kenneth Quentin Craig – what have you done to this house!?”
I explained, she apologized, and a few weeks later the men were apprehended. Surprisingly, I was not scarred by this experience. And apparently, neither were my parents, who promoted me immediately to the position of Babysitter and left me in charge of my brothers and sisters on most Friday nights. And the position of Babysitter has its perks, to be sure. For example, I could assign somebody else to retrieve things from the garage.
Along with the beautiful scenery and nostalgic recollections that come with October, it’s quite a spooky month. What, with Columbus Day and all. And don’t forget Halloween! So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I would dedicate my next few blog entries to some unsettling holiday story telling. Beware. These stories are not for the faint of heart. Mwu-ha…Mwu-hahahahah!!
Story #1: Home Alone 4: The Prequel
I was seven years old the first time I was left at home by myself. It was October of 1978, in a small suburban town in southern California. Abba ruled the airwaves and Star Wars ruled my dreams. Mr. Schwamm was my second grade teacher, and though his teaching abilities were called into question more than once by my parents, I enjoyed Friday afternoons when we had “dance time.” What a festival it was each Friday, full of music and courting. As long as you kept your finger out of your nose, pretty much anybody was willing to dance with you. There was no social awkwardness in second grade.
This particular Friday morning, on my way out the door, my mom kissed my cheek, handed me my Mork & Mindy lunchbox, and reminded me that when I got home that afternoon she wouldn’t be there. She was taking my brother and sisters to the dentist, and she would be back shortly after I got home. She carefully explained that she would leave the door on the side of the garage unlocked, and I could enter through that door and then take the connecting door from the garage into the house.
I was never a big fan of the garage – what, with the darkness and dampness and the hideous child-eating hobgoblin that lurked there on the off chance I was stupid enough to go into the garage by myself. (I was never that stupid. Before going into the garage, I would usually organize a posse of family members to accompany me.) But I was also excited for my bachelorhood and all that it would entail. Let’s see, drinks at 2:30, a light supper at 3:00, and the dancing that started in Mr. Schamm’s class that afternoon would then continue at Casa de Kenny Craig.
I nodded to my mom that I understood how to get from outside the house to the inside, and I headed off to school. As soon as I got to school I began to imagine our house. I knew my mom was still there, but in my mind, it was already sitting there, empty and silent. I thought about it on and off throughout the day, and each time I did, I imagined myself walking into this house that had been left alone for hours. Abandoned, really. It was a little unnerving.
I casually walked home from school that afternoon, not in a hurry to make any kind of destination. Kicked a pile of leaves or two, inspected some bugs in some trees, hummed the Peanuts theme song. I eventually arrived at my house and stared at it from the sidewalk for a few moments. I walked to the door on the side of the garage, and turned the handle. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and tried to casually walk through the garage as if the whole world was grading my performance of bravery. I stepped into the house…and it was even more still than I had imagined. It was an eerie quiet. I could almost hear myself sweat.
Once you entered the door from the garage into our house, the master bedroom was off to the right, and directly in front of you was a bathroom that you could enter from the hall, where I was, and that also lead into the master bedroom, so if you were sitting on the throne, you would be looking right into the master bedroom.
Relieved to finally have some much-needed peace and quiet for such an occasion, I dropped my little Levis and took a seat. It was then that I noticed my dad’s rifle, lying on the bed. I had seen it once or twice before, but it was a rare sighting. As children, we were generally discouraged from even looking at, and had never been allowed to touch it. The fact that it was so brazenly lying there almost startled me, and my first thought was “Ooooh…somebody’s in trouuuuuuubllllllle.” Taking my time doing my business, my eyes began to wonder around my parents’ room, and I started to take notice of how untidy their room was. Drawers pulled open, items from said drawers thrown about the room and covering the floor. I decided right then and there that I was not going to listen to even one more lecture from them on the state of my own room.
I completed my business, finished the paperwork…and flushed the toilet. At that precise moment, I heard a stampede of hurried footsteps right…over…my…head. My flushing had alerted intruders, who were now trapped upstairs, that somebody else besides them was in the house. Still not completely clear on what was happening, I ran alongside the footsteps above me until I saw three individuals run down the stairs and out the front door. Shaken (not stirred), I looked around the house and discovered that most things were in disarray – tipped over, emptied, broken, out of place. I was suddenly not so interested in being home alone, and I ran across the street to the safety of my friend Jeff, or more precisely, Jeff’s mom. We waited together until my mom came home. When I looked out the window of Jeff’s house and saw my mom’s car in the driveway, I walked over. She came running out of the house, looked right at me and said, “Kenneth Quentin Craig – what have you done to this house!?”
I explained, she apologized, and a few weeks later the men were apprehended. Surprisingly, I was not scarred by this experience. And apparently, neither were my parents, who promoted me immediately to the position of Babysitter and left me in charge of my brothers and sisters on most Friday nights. And the position of Babysitter has its perks, to be sure. For example, I could assign somebody else to retrieve things from the garage.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Your 80s Station
Here in Las Vegas we actually have a radio station designed and programmed to feed us southern Nevadans a solid, albeit unbalanced diet of 80s music. I say unbalanced because they have an entire decade of tunes to choose from, yet they have a vast library of exactly eight songs that they play in rotation. In fact, in its conceptual stage, I believe they were going to call it "The Madonna and Men at Work Station." Test audiences didn’t like it, so they went with “Star: Your 80s Station.”
Here’s why they are not MY 80s station:
First, I was a teenager in the 80s. With no real responsibilities, any cash I had went directly to purchasing cds. Any odd jobs I did for neighbors I would say “Just make my check out to The Wherehouse.” Essentially, any 80s song I want to hear now, I already own. Some 80s songs that I never want to hear again…I already own. (Debby Gibson, I’m looking in your direction.)
Second, I’m annoyed with the DJs who are introducing these 80s bands as if they had more than one hit, and they are teasing us with which possible song could be coming up next. “Coming up next, it’s Dexy’s Midnight Runners.” Hmm. Gee. What could that song BE? Could it be…'Come On Eileen?' Oh, wait…what was their other big song? Oh, right. There wasn’t one. “Coming up next, Dexy’s Midnight Runners doing a medley of their hit…”
Finally, these program directors are retarded. Just because these songs are from the same decade, doesn’t mean they should be in the same line up. Any teenager from the 80s will tell you about the natural segregation that existed then – you had hard rock, rap, punk, techno pop, top 40, alternative, R&B, reggae, and George Michael. There was no such station that played all of these songs together. But now there is. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Las Vegas’ own Star 102.7.
The DJs will actually give teasers like this: “Coming up next, it’s Duran Duran, The Cure, and The Pointer Sisters!” Huh? “Stay tuned! Coming right up we’ve got Van Halen, Guns n’ Roses, and Richard Marx!” Really? These guys are peers? I mean, could you even fathom the wedgie that Axl Rose would give Richard Marx if they met? Mr. Marx would just now be finding his underwear, in 2005. And then he would write a top 40 hit about his underwear and how he’d been right there waiting for them.
Now, here’s my favorite, and this is an actual, real-life example I heard whilst driving one day. “Right after these commercials we’ve got The Pet Shop Boys, Tiffany, and of course, Pink Floyd. So stay tuned!” OF COURSE, Pink Floyd! “OF COURSE?!” Does that sound like a natural progression? That’s like saying “For dinner we’re having pizza, breadsticks, and of course, orange juice.” “For bedtime kids, we’ll be reading The Little Engine that Could, Goodnight Moon, and of course, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.” “My professional goals include getting a promotion, becoming top salesman, and of course, getting sued for embezzlement.”
A suggestion might be “Coming up next, Paul Simon, Tom Petty, and OF COURSE, Pink Floyd.” See, you could imagine these guys hanging out, having a conversation. Of course, that conversation would begin and end with:
“Dude, are there anymore special brownies?”
“No.”
“Any Cheetos left?”
“No.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
Or another possibility – “Coming up next, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and of course, White Snake.” And you could imagine what topic would be first on their list to discuss. Right, hair products.
Despite a conversation I once had with my friend Chris Clark regarding 80s music, wherein, at the end of the conversation we concluded, “Oh, WHY did we ever have to have the 80s?” I am actually a fan of the 80s music scene. (In our defense, we had just finished singing the ‘a-buh-ba-ba-ba-buh, buh-buh-buh-buh’ part of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up.”) Some of the stuff I like strictly for nostalgic purposes, some it’s fun to make fun while simultaneously being ashamed of knowing all the words, and some I genuinely think is outstanding music. (U2, I salute you.) Besides, if it weren’t for the 80s, we wouldn’t have the likes of Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, and of course, Hall & Oats.
Here’s why they are not MY 80s station:
First, I was a teenager in the 80s. With no real responsibilities, any cash I had went directly to purchasing cds. Any odd jobs I did for neighbors I would say “Just make my check out to The Wherehouse.” Essentially, any 80s song I want to hear now, I already own. Some 80s songs that I never want to hear again…I already own. (Debby Gibson, I’m looking in your direction.)
Second, I’m annoyed with the DJs who are introducing these 80s bands as if they had more than one hit, and they are teasing us with which possible song could be coming up next. “Coming up next, it’s Dexy’s Midnight Runners.” Hmm. Gee. What could that song BE? Could it be…'Come On Eileen?' Oh, wait…what was their other big song? Oh, right. There wasn’t one. “Coming up next, Dexy’s Midnight Runners doing a medley of their hit…”
Finally, these program directors are retarded. Just because these songs are from the same decade, doesn’t mean they should be in the same line up. Any teenager from the 80s will tell you about the natural segregation that existed then – you had hard rock, rap, punk, techno pop, top 40, alternative, R&B, reggae, and George Michael. There was no such station that played all of these songs together. But now there is. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Las Vegas’ own Star 102.7.
The DJs will actually give teasers like this: “Coming up next, it’s Duran Duran, The Cure, and The Pointer Sisters!” Huh? “Stay tuned! Coming right up we’ve got Van Halen, Guns n’ Roses, and Richard Marx!” Really? These guys are peers? I mean, could you even fathom the wedgie that Axl Rose would give Richard Marx if they met? Mr. Marx would just now be finding his underwear, in 2005. And then he would write a top 40 hit about his underwear and how he’d been right there waiting for them.
Now, here’s my favorite, and this is an actual, real-life example I heard whilst driving one day. “Right after these commercials we’ve got The Pet Shop Boys, Tiffany, and of course, Pink Floyd. So stay tuned!” OF COURSE, Pink Floyd! “OF COURSE?!” Does that sound like a natural progression? That’s like saying “For dinner we’re having pizza, breadsticks, and of course, orange juice.” “For bedtime kids, we’ll be reading The Little Engine that Could, Goodnight Moon, and of course, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.” “My professional goals include getting a promotion, becoming top salesman, and of course, getting sued for embezzlement.”
A suggestion might be “Coming up next, Paul Simon, Tom Petty, and OF COURSE, Pink Floyd.” See, you could imagine these guys hanging out, having a conversation. Of course, that conversation would begin and end with:
“Dude, are there anymore special brownies?”
“No.”
“Any Cheetos left?”
“No.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
Or another possibility – “Coming up next, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and of course, White Snake.” And you could imagine what topic would be first on their list to discuss. Right, hair products.
Despite a conversation I once had with my friend Chris Clark regarding 80s music, wherein, at the end of the conversation we concluded, “Oh, WHY did we ever have to have the 80s?” I am actually a fan of the 80s music scene. (In our defense, we had just finished singing the ‘a-buh-ba-ba-ba-buh, buh-buh-buh-buh’ part of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up.”) Some of the stuff I like strictly for nostalgic purposes, some it’s fun to make fun while simultaneously being ashamed of knowing all the words, and some I genuinely think is outstanding music. (U2, I salute you.) Besides, if it weren’t for the 80s, we wouldn’t have the likes of Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, and of course, Hall & Oats.
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