Dear Friends,
Over the weekend, I went up to Happy Jack, Arizona to spend the night at my friend Mike’s cabin. It’s a wonderful place and not really a cabin as much as it is a really nice house on the edge of the forest. Our friend, Tom, went with us and unfortunately, brother Tom was not able to join.
If you have been keeping score at home, Mike and I have been friends since 1986. He had a birthday back in July and I wrote about him then. It was very cool to finally get to see the “cabin” after all these years of hearing about it. I have seen a few pictures here and there, so I kind of knew what to expect, but I also didn’t know what the area was going to look like.
Our weekend started off on Friday night, actually, as Mike had the kids and I and Tom’s family over for a BBQ. He made some delicious burgers and dogs and Tom brought some elote that was pretty darn killer, as well. After dinner, we were supposed to play Cards Against Humanity, but Mike forgot that he didn’t have the game at the house, so we played another game.
This was a game of scenarios, and it was really fun. One of them has stuck with me and it was basically this: You wake up one morning in Bruce Springsteen’s body. You look and sound exactly like him, you are him, for all intents and purposes, yet you have whatever musical talent you possessed prior to taking over his body. You have a show at the Staples Center that night. What do you do?
I think I would go full Dewey Cox on the situation and just get blasted before going on stage. Then you could say that you were checking yourself into rehab and figure it out from there. Could you learn to play like Bruce? Maybe.
There were some other great scenarios, too, and it was fun to see how the kids’ brains worked. Two generations sitting around a table exchanging ideas is a good thing. Many laughs were had and lots of great thinking was done. One of the other scenarios had to do with creating a PG rated movie that touched on a social taboo. I wish we would have explored this one further.
If you did a movie about people showing their true colors, I think you could pull it off. It would be hard to make a movie that shocked people that was PG, but you can do it. Jaws was PG, for example, and it changed the way people viewed the ocean. My love of Jaws is not a secret here at Ergonomic Mischief.
The True Colors movie would be based around people beginning to show their true colors, such as being honest and good or evil or mischievous or whatever, on their skin. It would center around a few main characters at the beginning of the outbreak and how they were shunned because of their changing pigmentation. As more and more people began to show their true colors, some people would start flocking towards those who had the same pigmentation variations as they did, and a few outcomes would take place.
The angry/evil/egomaniacal people would band together, at some point, and try to kill everyone else. Maybe everyone would turn red, if you will, eventually from being pissed off about the angry people doing angry things in droves because they were emboldened by seeing everyone’s true colors. It could also end with love conquering all and people turning the color of love and forgiveness and peace. Green, maybe?
Anyway, it was a thought provoking and fun evening. We agreed to head for the hills, as they say, at 8am the next morning and off we went to our beds at home. I was very excited about the cool air and seeing the cabin, so I didn’t sleep as well as I could have.
Mike picked us up and away we went. We stopped at Rock Springs for breakfast and had a delightful conversation about albino pornography. This came after I brought up the rule, is it #39, I think, where if you can imagine it, there’s porn of it. This came from an observation I made about all the saltwater taffy they had at Rock Springs in the gift area.
As we got seated at our table, Mike said that albino porn didn’t exist, and Tom and I scoffed at this. It certainly does exist, and we had some very good laughs about this. I believe one potential title was “Rat Eyed Fist Fuckers” and I ran it into the ground quickly. If you can imagine it, there really probably is porn of it. That’s the rule.
Our waitress was very friendly. Too friendly, really, and she called us all “honey” and “sweetie” and “love” during the whole meal. She was a bit older than us and declared how much she missed and loved the 1970s. I also got a lot of back rubs from her which was pretty unpleasant in the age of Covid, if you ask me. We got out of there with our lives, though, and we were full. They still make a good breakfast.
After a trip to Bashas in Camp Verde where some idiot decided to park almost on top of Mike’s vehicle, we got the cabin and truly started our weekend. We did a whole lot of nothing after moving some furniture around for Mike and enjoyed the heck out of each other’s company. Mike made us a killer dinner and we had a few wonderful Del Bac whiskeys. By 9ish, we were all tuckered out and it was off to bed.
Personally, I slept fairly fitfully. The first night in a new place is always strange and I couldn’t really adjust to the temperature change. I was either too hot or too cold and could never find my way to “just right” status. I got enough sleep, though, and our time in the morning was very nice, too. Tom made us some pork roll with egg and cheese on an English muffin (for the queen) and it was delightful.
We made our way back down from the mountains in time to see the Cardinals game kick off and the weekend was just about done. My curse on the Pittsburgh Steelers is lifted and now I can watch a Steelers game with Mike again. Victories all around. What a nice weekend with the fellas. Can’t wait until we can have a repeat up there with our better halves.
See you tomorrow.
I don't know why, but I liked this perspective on Sunday morning and I'm still okay with it today.
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