Alan showed up in town again and he got the drain working in my outdoor shower so I no longer have to stand in a puddle when I shower. I also put up some extra slats over the weekend so I do not have any little peepers holes. This morning when I went out for a shower there was a heavily humidified fog hanging in my yard. Taking a shower in the fog was a lot of fun.
Friday night I made clam chowder and watched the latest Harry Potter movie. I has seen it in the theaters, however this was the first time I had seen it captioned so I could finally figure out what was going on. Even without the captioning I pretty much knew what was going on, but I miss the little details. Anyways it was a long movie and pretty fun, however I got annoyed when the dark wizard hunting guy turned out be the bad guy. I liked him. Also, every ‘protection against the dark arts’ teacher they have is either the bad guy or is some way central to the plot. It’s a very long movie. Before it was over I felt my head lolling about and my eyes drooping. I think the Champaign I was drinking helped.
Saturday morning I headed over to Oviedo to a large yard sale that was taking place at a retirement home. They have one every year and I usually head out to pick up a few treasures. They did not really have a lot of good stuff this year. Also, the doddering old fogies who run the place are idiots. There was one building that contained yard sale stuff, and they were only letting a few people in at a time. Some senile old coot was manning the door, and I think he kept forgetting what his job was because every now and then the door would pop open and he would stick his head out and his toothless maw would gape in surprise at the line of people and then let a few people in. Once he only let old people in because they were ‘standing in the sun’. Needless to say, I never made it into the building.
They were grilling burgers there and I bought two cheese burgers for $1.75 each. They were a rip off, but I was hungry. Luckily they did not taste too bad. The old man manning the registered seemed shocked that I was not going to order a drink to go with my burgers. “You’is gunna eat them without a DRINK?” he said to me in an awed tone of voice, as if I had just informed him that I was going to drop my pants and shit out a full-scale replica of Michelangelo ‘David’.
I did make off with a couple of paintings. I got them both for five dollars. Here is the first one:
I am not sure what it is. Some sort of ‘neese’ like Balinese or Indonesian or something. The painting came from some new york art gallery (the sticker was on the back) and I had to tear off the original paper sealing to take apart the painting. I like the picture, but the frame was a gaudy lavender color and the inner border was too white. So I painted the frame copper and the border black and now I am pleased with it. The painting itself seems to be some sort of very light rice-paper that had been silk-screened and then glued onto a thin board and then textured with paint. I am pretty pleased with it because it has a chicken and a stoned fish.
The second painting is rather small with a wood frame. It looks like it was perhaps made from charcoal, although the texture of it seems a bit grittier than charcoal. It’s some technique I am not aware of:
It appears to be some nighttime forest image, some big spooky haunted forest. However if you look closely it almost looks like one of the tree’s is walking away with it’s hand on it’s hip. I am really not sure what to make of it, but I like it. I cannot quite make out the painters name that is signed on the bottom.
Saturday afternoon the teenage daughter of my neighbor came over and rang my doorbell. She was holding a clipboard and asked me to sign a waiver that said I would not call the police because she was having a sweet 16 party with a live DJ. I don’t really care so I signed the waiver. Wow, I cannot believe how many kids showed up to that thing. They had torches up and they strung up some lights in the street. The live DJ was cranking out the music and they were parking all over the neighborhood to walk over it. (They appeared to mostly be black kids) I would have been mildly alarmed at the idea of a hoard of teenagers crossing my property, however the girls parents seemed to have the even well supervised and nothing seemed to get out of hands. Also a few cops showed up and stood around to make sure everything stayed smooth. This went on until around 1 in the morning or so and the next day there was no trace anyone was there. I hope they had fun.
Dialing back 20 years, where Ed's weekend hinged on a functional drain, $5 art, and a sweet-sixteen waiver.
Ah, 2006. Ed's weekend involves a fog shower, a $3.50 retirement-home burger, and a hand-scrawled waiver for a teenage party with a live DJ. Two decades later, that fog shower would be marketed as a 'luxury outdoor mist experience' with a subscription for pH-balanced rain, and the burger would cost $14 with a QR code tracing the cow's genealogy. The sweet-sixteen waiver has morphed into a 40-page digital liability release, notarized through an app before the drone even starts filming. Yard sales have migrated to marketplace algorithms, where 'retirement community treasures' are snapped up by flippers who'd never wait for a toothless doorman. And that evil clown from your attic? In 2026 he'd be a limited-edition cursed digital collectible with fractional ownership. You could have retired on demon clown NFTs, Ed, but you also could have kept a drain that works. Progress is a funny beast; sometimes it gives you water feature apps, and sometimes it just takes away your puddle.
“2006 Ed, did you really tear the original paper seal off that New York gallery painting just to repaint the lavender frame? Was the chicken-and-stoned-fish worth destroying the provenance, or do you lie awake wondering what it might have been worth if you'd left the gaudy frame alone?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, guilty as charged. I tore that paper seal off like it was the cellophane on a gas-station hot dog, and I’d do it again. That frame was an abomination—gaudy lavender with a white inner border so bright it made my eyes water. If I’d left it alone, I’d have hung a painting that clashed with every wall in my house, and for what? A sticker from some New York gallery and a maybe-Balinese mystery. It was five bucks at a retirement home yard sale, not the Lost Ark. The chicken and the stoned fish are worth more to me than any provenance. Do I lie awake at night wondering? No, I lie awake because my neighbor’s sweet sixteen had a DJ until one in the morning and I’m pretty sure a tree frog got in the bathroom. I made my choice. No regrets.
