Category: Nostalgia

Ready? Okay!

As someone who has been there, I can tell you there is no prouder moment in a father’s life than when your eldest son dresses in drag and proceeds to shake his booty in front of a large crowd of your friends and neighbors:

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I should point out that the occasion was the annual Grissom High vs. Huntsville High Powderpuff football game conducted as a benefit for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So, it was for a good cause that Number One dressed in a miniskirt and participated in a dance routine at halftime that made his old man blush and start looking around for a pair of sunglasses and a wig.… Read the rest

Pre Lives, But Not in This Body

What a relief! In the comments from yesterday’s post, I mentioned that I went on a cleaning frenzy recently and threw away my Nike Air Max ’96s that I wore in the Rocket City Marathon back in 1997. After reminiscing about all my “old school” shoes, I began to have second thoughts and wondered if I was going to have to make a trip to the landfill to dig them out.IMG_0071.JPG

Good news–I found them! After 21 plus years of marriage, Eyegal knows that I often make rash decisions like that and figured that I would regret it and had put them in the garage instead of the trash can.… Read the rest

Name…That…Shooooe!

After coming clean on my shoe addiction, I’m ripping off a page from everybody’s favorite Catfish Queen reject Nancy French and having my first contest at Ocular Fusion.

(Cue the audience to shout) Name…That…Shooooe! (cue wild, audience applause and generic game show music)

That’s right, the first person to correctly ID the following shoe will receive, courtesy of yours truly, a signed copy of Doug Mendenhall’s new book, How Jesus Ended Up in the Food Court: Seventy-Seven Devotional Thoughts You Never Thought About Before.

Here’s the picture. Remember, I’m looking for the exact name of this Nike classic:

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It’s really not that hard; there are sufficient clues scattered here and there that should lead you toward the correct answer.… Read the rest

Revenge of a Shoe Nerd

“Where do I buy the Nike shoes?”
-Tom Hanks as Victor Navorski, The Terminal

Hello. My name is Mike the Eyeguy, and I am a shoe nerd.

There, I said it, it’s out in the open now. I no longer have to hide the fact that ever since I was a bushy-haired boy growing up in the 1970s, I’ve been obsessed with athletic shoes of all brands, colors and sports. I’ve worn just about all of them at one time or another: Keds, PF Flyers (remember how they made you run faster and jump higher?), Converse All Star Chuck Taylor canvas high tops (black, red and sky blue–back before I knew that color was associated with the evil Tar Heels), Puma “Suedes” (often referred to as “Clydes” after Walt Frazier, famous point guard for the N.Y.… Read the rest

A Front Porch View

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I’ve been grabbing some much needed and overdue front porch time in my homestate of Virginia this week. The view above is from a couple of nights ago as a late evening thunderstorm rolled into the valley where I grew up. That particular storm blew the roof off the Virginia Transportation Museum in downtown Roanoke. I know that probably didn’t make the A.P. wire, but it sure got the attention of folks around here.

Besides sitting on the front porch taking in an eyeful of Blue Ridge Mountains, here are a few of my other favorite things to do when I’m in Virginia:… Read the rest

Cubera Nights

USS_Cubera;0834702.jpg.jpgIt was fitting that my Father’s Day gift arrived in a small, Priority Mail shipping container. The Navy ballcap emblazoned with “USS Cubera, SS-347″ barely fit inside its tight, cardboard quarters. The snugness reminded me of the way her crew must have felt, tightly sealed inside the smothering, steel hull of the Balao Class fast-attack submarine as she patrolled the waters of the Caribbean and the Atlantic during the Cold War, her eyes ever open for any sign of danger from Mother Bear.

And of course, the cap reminded me of my father, which, I suppose, was the whole point.… Read the rest

Correction–It’s the Doughboy!

Thanks to Scott Freeman, we now have some new information to mull over this morning regarding the Burger King-Antichrist connection.

In the comments section of yesterday’s post, Scott chimed in with this pearl:

“You know the founder of Burger King was COC right?”

I replied:

“Get out of here! Really? No, I wasn’t aware of this, but that does thicken the plot considerably.

Well, now that you’ve piqued our curiosity, we’re waiting with bated breath to hear more. Do you happen to know if he was premillenial or amillenial?”

Then he shot back:

“I may be wrong. But during my first youth ministry gig I worked with a former missionary to Brazil.

… Read the rest

Is He the Antichrist?

creepyking-775233.JPGThere is much ado about what day it is, you know, that day. And of course, the discussion invariably comes around to who is the Antichrist. A long list of famous people have been nominated over the years, but as I survey the cultural landscape these days, a leading candidate to me is that creepy monarch fronting for the international fast-food chain, Burger King.

There’s already been a good expose written on “The King” elsewhere, and many other scary details can be found here. Despite the fact that I rarely eat there (I prefer to receive a month’s worth of fat and cholesterol over the course of at least 15 days as opposed to one sitting, thank you very much), I just can’t get this guy out of my mind.… Read the rest

Blogging–The Wonder Years, Chapter V

Speaking of Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (aka John Denver), in 1974 he was one of my favorite musical artists, along with Elton John, Steely Dan, The Eagles and Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO). I was pretty eclectic, even though I had no idea at the time what that word meant. All I knew was that I liked it loud–“Annie’s Song” was simply not the same unless it was belted out at the top of one’s lungs with the radio volume button turned all the way to the right.

Hence the problem. This was long before the advent of “personal listening devices” such as iPods, back in the stone-age when LP stereos were located in common areas and a set of headphones was a rare luxury.… Read the rest

Blogging–The (Bleep) Wonder Years, Chapter IV

In 1972, comedian George Carlin released the monologue, Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television on his album Class Clown. In 1973, some of those words even made it onto the radio airwaves when WBAI-FM broadcast, uncensored, another Carlin monologue containing the same profanity.

My parents wouldn’t even let me watch M*A*S*H or All in the Family much less listen to Carlin, but that never stopped a preteen who was determined to hear what all the fuss was about. The problem was I had the kind of mother who always had the uncanny knack of knowing when my Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition was going to arrive and intercepting it before I could get home from school, so coming by critical information in those days wasn’t easy.… Read the rest

Blogging–The Wonder Years, Chapter III

They got little hands
Little eyes
They walk around
Tellin’ great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet
Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
To live
–from Randy Newman’s “Short People”

If you’ve spent any time at all reading Ocular Fusion, you’re no doubt aware of my enduring love for basketball. If you were to go further and scan the pages of my elementary school scrapbook, you would find that I listed basketball as my “favorite activity” from second grade through seventh (there was that little “tag” business in first grade, but that hardly counts).… Read the rest

Blogging–The Wonder Years, Chapter II

Let it fly in the breeze
And get caught in the trees
Give a home to the fleas in my hair
A home for fleas
A hive for bees
A nest for birds
There ain’t no words
For the beauty,the splendor, the wonder of my…
Hair, HAIR, hair, HAIR, hair, HAIR, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair.
–from the song “Hair”

In September, 1974, it was near midnight in the Age of Aquarius and all was not well in the United States of America. Signs of upheaval were everywhere–the Vietnam war was drawing to an inglorious close, Patricia Hearst had been kidnapped (or had she?),… Read the rest

Blogging–The Wonder Years, Chapter I

Although I started Ocular Fusion in October, 2005, it turns out that my blogging roots go back quite a ways–the fall of 1974 to be precise. That was when Ms. Fine, my 7th grade teacher at Burnt Chimney Elementary School in Wirtz, Virginia, gave us the assignment of keeping a journal. I suppose like all good teachers she wanted us to learn to write well by writing often. Also, I’m sure that she had learned in teacher school that it was good for young people to “explore and express their feelings.” Of course, maybe she was just plain nosey too.… Read the rest