Author: admin

Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103

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Temptation, thy name is LEGO. Just when I thought it was safe to start thinking about something other than little plastic bricks, like seeing friends again and carefully frolicking (is that a thing?) in the warmer weather, you came out with your new Space Shuttle Discovery and accompanying Hubble telescope.

I thought to myself, because there’s still no one else around, I need help. There must be a pandemic hotline to call. Or a book. I’ve gone through several Zoom addiction-related publications – Zoom Nation; Zoom or Die; and Bang, Zoom, to the Moon Alice.

Then I had an epiphany (the 78th one in the last 14 months according to the list I’ve been keeping). I’ll buy the set and put it in the back of a closet, behind things I never use, like the 23 boxes of Lysol wipes the CDC now says we never really needed for wiping down our mail (so I won’t bother with the tax statement i just received that was postmarked January 29).

It will be just as if I had purchased an on-sale Christmas present early. Of course I’ve never actually purchased a Christmas present, but I’ve heard stories.

So I did it. I ventured to the LEGO store, for my first in-person purchase of a set, where I had to embarrassingly admit that I was not a member of their VIP club, embarrassing only there, not in the real world, where the opposite is true.

So now I’m staring at the box, and it’s staring back, all 2354 pieces of it. Do I have the will power to stick to my plan? Tune in tomorrow.

No Kidding

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It’s not April 1st until tomorrow, in case you think this is a joke. For once, it isn’t.

I hadn’t paid any attention to the Oscar nominations when they were announced a couple weeks ago, but an article today about one of the nominees, Paul Raci, caught my attention, because, guess what, he and I took improv classes together in 1979-80.

I have some interesting memories of Paul. We were friends, though we definitely had different ways of letting loose on the weekends. He was a very intense guy, and certainly, as evidenced by his newly-found acclaim, a hell of a lot more talented than I was.

Nevertheless, I can tell you that he and I shared the stage in a scene where we, along with two others (one of whom was the cause of me running in the Chicago Marathon after a night of debauchery – but that’s another story, which I have told before), put Harry Belafonte to shame, as we turned the venue into a banana boat and went to work while we sang (even me, with a little help from my friends) Day-O.

Congratulations Paul.

Random Occurrences

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I couldn’t help but wonder what combinations John Cage, the man who conceived Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 Radios, might create were he alive today, as I enjoyed the surround sound serenade provided to me by the simultaneous, differing ring tones emanating from my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, as they alerted me to yet another spam risk phone call.

The New York Times reported this week that the “Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland is offering 10-cent beers to the first 2,021 people who show a Covid-19 vaccine certificate.” My regular readers may remember that I foretold such a combination in my February 10th blog, “A Shot and a Beer”.

I was sitting along the river, basking in the sun, minding my own business, but apparently giving off an aura of isolated-during-the-pandemic blues when a woman walking two dogs approached and asked me whether I needed any puppy therapy. I politely declined her offer and she moved on, but then I started to wonder whether I had made a mistake, that perhaps the dogs were irrelevant, that perhaps the woman’s own nickname was Puppy, and that perhaps I had missed out on an unforgettable opportunity because of a pandemic side effect of social skills decay.

Lost in Transition

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Worried that my lack of side effects to the COVID-19 vaccinations may mean that my immune system is underperforming, I’m considering going in for a third shot, despite the fact that neither hypochondria nor paranoia qualifies as an underlying condition.

I had my first mask incident today, not an argument about whether someone should or shouldn’t be wearing one, but rather about my bold choice to wear a white one before Memorial Day.

In the latest step of the sexual revolution, the CDC has announced that it’s okay for small groups of consenting adults to be within six feet of each other without masks on, angering purveyors of the S&M trade, who are concerned about the effect on business if masks are removed.

 

A Shot and a Goal

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Now that I’ve received a second shot of laced mRNA, it’s time to turn my attention to my next goal in life.

I’ve already made a hole-in-one, albeit on an indoor simulator.

I’ve conquered LEGO, as you all know, though a Master Class might be fun.

I’ve walked around a renaissance fair dressed in medieval garb, eating a very large turkey leg, while people addressed me as Your Majesty.

I’ve learned to play the piano. I can’t actually play, but now I know how to.

I ate a peanut, once. I ice skated, once. I did chair yoga, once.

I’ve been questioned by the FBI. Unrelated to that, I’ve had my picture in the paper.

I’ve burned the hair off the back of my hand with a cigarette lighter, even though I’ve never smoked.

I’m not sure what’s left. I’ve never seen Gone with the Wind. Maybe, looking back on the last year, I’ll enroll in Le Cordon Bleu, to be ready for COVID-22.

Withdrawal

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With the aid of a book on curating LEGO sets, my Saturn V Rocket and Grand Piano have been given their new homes in my living room. My dining table, which could have been mistaken for a remnant from a mad scientist’s laboratory, now stands empty and useless, except for Zoom calls and, well, dining.

My instruction booklets have been put away. The room is eerily silent. No screams of dismay from me. No clicking of pieces into place. My hands, steady and sure as I performed LEGO surgery, are now shaking. My throat is as dry as my wit.

I find LEGO Meetup groups online, but no LEGO support groups, which is what I really need. I watch videos of people assembling their LEGO projects. They look happy, but they don’t know what awaits them. They’re just one missing piece away from a complete breakdown. Another crisis brought on by the isolation of the pandemic.

The Keys to Success (LEGO Grand Piano – Day 8)

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In normal times, one can take a two-hour tour of the Steinway & Sons factory (not one of those dangerous three-hour tours with Gilligan and the Skipper) in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York. Now that I’m a non-certified member of the piano-building community, I might want to drop in sometime and compare notes with the resident artisans.

IMG_0553.JPGOn the other hand, it takes them at least nine months to build a grand piano, whereas I’m on pace to finish in no more than two weeks, so what could I really learn from them. Still, they’ve been doing it for over 160 years, so maybe I should consider their two-year paid apprenticeship program, although the commute could be a problem.

Also, they require the ability to understand technically complex instruction. But clearly I’ve already proven that I can do that, most of the time, with only the occasional, major mistake requiring hours of work to undo it, and the occasional left-over piece.

Under the C (LEGO Grand Piano – Day 7)

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I took a deep breath and did a full Poseidon on the piano, turning it upside down in one quick, but carefully planned motion, to work on the underbelly of the beast, which now laid helpless before me like a giant tortoise flipped onto its shell.

IMG_0551.JPGWorking quickly, in case the batteries I had installed had some unknown, nefarious, self-generating ability that was not included in the instructions as part of LEGO’s devious, seemingly unstoppable strategy for world domination, I constructed and attached the three legs (there goes the tortoise analogy) and the pedals (yes, Virginia, my plastic piano has pedals).

I feel like I should be done, but I’m only halfway home. The groundhog must have seen its shadow.

Trouble with the Curve (LEGO Grand Piano – Day 6)

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(Aerial pan of fireworks, with background noise of crowd cheering) (Camera zooms in on a pair of hands inserting the last of six batteries into place, closing and screwing tight the cover to their holder, and pushing the holder back into place in the bowels of a plastic grand piano)

IMG_0550.JPGYes, it’s true. Despite the gloomy prognostication of the online article I cited yesterday, in a moment of inspiration I found a way to make up for my earlier omission and right the ship, or piano if you will, with a set of batteries I found hiding in the back corner of a drawer that probably have no power left in them.

But that’s for another day. Now I’m thinking that there isn’t anything I can’t do, except maybe hit a curve ball. And then I see that the next step is to construct the legs by first turning what I’ve done so far upside down, which will immediately reveal any construction flaws up to this point and scatter random pieces to the wind.