Besides their gum droppy delicious-ness and their near-perfect packaging these are the two best things about Chuckles candies:

1. You don’t find them very often.
2. But you can always find them in little Mom ‘N Pop hardware stores, without fail.

I wonder why…

I read somewhere once that jumping rope for just ten minutes burns as much calories as like…running uphill for five days or fourteen weeks straight…or something amazing like that.

Plus, if you can rope in at least two extra pals into your heart pumpy jumping then you can Double-Dutch and make up happy little rappy-chants while working up your sweats.

Not sure of the exact figure, but I think laughing at rappy-chants burns quite a bit of calories too.

Old School ropes available at Canoe.

For over a year I came up empty handed in a number of online auctions for the fancy little 660 calculator from Panasonic.

But one sits smartly on my desk, at last!

I’m thinking of taking it and a thin stack of books on an early Spring stroll and pretending I’m an Algebra-obsessed exchange student in Osaka, circa 1981.

Just seems like the right thing to do.

“…in the world, on March 2nd get to a TV.”

Twenty one years ago tonight, I did just as the voice commanded and knelt my 7th grade self in front of the biggest TV in our house. The commercial for the commercial underlined just how serious it would be.

The fainter and closer to eternal loss that a memory is, the more I love it…

For a long while, I could still picture the diner dance party, the Catholic school girls, and the skunky striped hair-do as clearly as I did the burning crosses and the waxy black Jesus.

But when one set of chaste images is banned after only one airing, sending the blasphemous others into ubiquitous iconography, of course my memories are bound to darken at different rates.

At last, through the power and glory of internet video, all are again resurrected, forever and ever. A-men.

Gold and silver and other metallic-ized gifts.

1. Postalco Jotter Notebook.
I had really needed this as all year I had been scribbling phone numbers and directions on a stupid stocking stuffer from last year: a box of little loose (and easily lost) sheets of paper printed with a light orange graphic of man climbing a cliff or jumping over a river or something (I’ve blocked the beyond-dumbness from my memory) and the words “The will to succeed.” (Yesterday I easily mustered the will to successfully toss them in the trash!)

2. My dog Aesop looks like a fox, so thus this door-knocker looks like my dog.

3. My mother gave me the vintage spoon, along with a story: When we moved from England back to America when I was nine months old, the movers had accidentally packed up my baby spoon and my mom was in a panic about how she was going to feed me during our week long sea voyage back to the states. She said every restaurant in England had these little silver spoons in the standard brown sugar tins set on each table. So she guiltlessly stole one with which to feed me at sea. Flash forward 30 some years and she comes across the spoon somehow in my sister’s kitchen and steals the spoon (once again!) and gives it to me for Christmas.

4. Ultra-chunky pretend nails, perfect only for laying around looking pretty.

5. Another vintage English gift, though not stolen. A stamp sheet cover from the 1940s. Trying to figure out how/where to display it as it doesn’t really fit modern American stamp books.

6. A hunk of Brazilian pyrite now giving gritty glam to the top of a stack of books.

With all these shining, sparkling gifts, my digs are one big disco ball!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to dig through a big box of army issued artifacts belonging to a relative who had served as a Lieutenant during WWII. Little pieces of history to hold in my hands that hinted at both the epic and ordinary routines of an enlisted man.

1. Pre-Packaged Stationery Set for writing your mom, sweetheart, or (apparently) your secret seductress.

2. Front and back of a military matchbook.

3. Look what this book warns: This document must not fall into enemy hands!

4. Four pack of cigarettes.

5. Just some of the pins the Lt. had been awarded.

Included in the box was a letter the Lieutenant’s secretary had written to him a year after the war ended in which she described how hard it was to return to civilian life. How much she missed the camaraderie of those she served with, and the strong sense of purpose. She even lamented the changing styles of women’s fashion she was now forced to select from, instead of her government-issued uniforms.

Again and again in the letter she said how hard it was to “get back into the swing of things.”

I hope she eventually did. I hope she went on to have a good, full life.

Around this time last year the Rogues Gallery webshop had copies of a non-redesigned edition of The Call of The Wild for sale. With winter coming, and having never read the classic story, I figured it was a perfect time to add it to my library.

I didn’t necessarily expect myself to read it or enjoy it. Sometimes the so-called classics read too outdated, dry and homework-like to really be enjoyable, but The Call of The Wild was smoothly and simply written and I flipped from page to page eagerly. Most interestingly, the story is told from the point of view of Buck, the dog, but in an organic and understated way that doesn’t over-personify him into a cute or cartoony Beverly Hills Chihuahua or something.

If you’re at all like me, you’ll imagine your own dog in the center of the story, being stolen from its carefree and cushiony domesticated life into a cold and cruel existence that may or may not be the more appropriate place for your four-legged friend.

Just thinking about the book again makes me wanna go pet my pup.

I’d like to take a moment and applaud the makers of American, low-cost health and beauty products because they’re one of the few sectors remaining that let the packaging of their products get so old and outdated that they’re actually awesome and attractive looking again! Since I’m not much of a pill-popper, it’s my primary reason to head to the drug store.

So far things have been going smooth, but I know in a week or two the weather’s gonna get rude and rough, and two days later so is my skin. This winter I’m reverting back to good old school cocoa butter. I aimed to do so last December but I could no longer find the bright, retro yellow line of Cococare products locally, and I just don’t want to slather chocolate scratch-n-sniff sticker scented lotion on my face unless it’s coming out of a tub or tube destined for a Vincent Gallo movie scene.

(Wow, get this: I just looked it up and Cococare has actually been manufactured in Dover, New Jersey the past 40 years. Vincent Gallo indeed!)

This year I hopped online to locate Cococare and Walgreens.com let me know that a few select stores in my area actually still carry the line. So cocoa-ed, glowing December skin, here I come.

I’m really revved up to introduce to y’all a company that was just this morning introduced to me.

From the slick and sick Gasoline Cowboys website:

“Before WWII, Motorcycling was seen as a sport. The A.M.A. (American Motorcycle Association) sanctioned competition racing, hill climbs and recreational events such as the Gypsy tours. Many motorcycle clubs sprang up and each wore it’s own distinctive riding apparel, usually a colorful wool turtlezip sweater complete with decorative name and town embroidered on them. Likewise racers were sponsored by either the motorcycle manufacturer or by local dealers who would outfit their hero in tough sweaters for practical reasons of promotion and easy recognition on the track.

As war clouds gathered, racing and motorcycling in general was put on hiatus till hostilities ceased. When peace broke out in 1945, American servicemen were demobed. During the war, they had earned regular pay, but found little to spend it on. Once back home with wallets full of cash many of this generation bought motorcycles.

Many felt bored with civilian life after the perilous war years and some chose to seek out other adrenalin junkies. This resulted in the forming of hundreds of small motorcycle clubs with names like the ‘Lucky 13’s’ the ‘Top hatters’, ‘Ramblers’, and the ‘Bombers’. Members wore club sweaters; rode in formation not unlike the bomber squadrons and partied together.

Founded in 1920 by William P. Dehen, who made his mark by making hardy woolen sweaters for the American sports man. When you get a sweater from us, you are not buying a remake or a replica. Dehen has been making motor clothes and racewear for 89 years. Dehen’s unbroken lineage – still making racewear woolens and jackets on American soil since 1920. So we really mean it, you get to wear the real deal, not a copy.”

So…wow! Gasoline Cowboys will even create custom sweaters for your own crew. My mind’s racing, thinking of names for my own gang, wondering who might be tough enough to ride in and out of trouble beside me.

As a child, I’m not sure where my mother and father went every Saturday night, smelling of cologne and perfume, dressed fancy in black satin and tweed.

But as they primped and prepared to depart for the evening, my sister and I would watch Puttin on the Hits while we ate our stuck-at-home, little kid suppers.

Whenever I think of the show, even now, I automatically smell the fancy spritzes of my parents’ Brut and Chanel.

I selected this clip from the series in particular because the three contestants featured are named Stacy, Debbie and Stacy. That just kills me.

(Strange but true: My favorite babysitter Kerri, who taught me about Swatch watches, The Limited Express and Dynasty actually went to Jr. High School here in MN with most of the teen pop members of The Jets. I used to ask her about that all the dang time.)

In the room directly below me rests a large cardboard box crammed with all my old He-Man and She-Ra action figures. Before I was old enough to fawn over fashion, I marveled over the plastic couture and haute, blue brush-able hair of my Zodak and Teela and Trap-Jaw and MerMista toys.

Pastimes of my past and present join forces in the galactic-fashion illustrations of Adrian Riemann in which Evil-Lyn armors up in American Apparel leggings with a Cheap Monday clad Tri-Clops to battle in style their foes Man-At-Arms (in Common Projects sneakers) and She-Ra (sporting April 77 denim).

The artist is considering printing the entire collection on fluorescent paper for a gallery exhibition. Personally, I want full color treatments, a runway show, and a fashed-up animated re-make.