English Beat Weekend

Piano in the bathroom
Fridge on the porch
This is the week
We get new floors

We’ll be going to a restaurant
That's got drive thru
Since our dishwasher
Is also in the bathroom

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams

If you want to be transported into a World of Pure Imagination, please play Wonka's World of Candy with the sound ON - even better with headphones! Listening to the vast myriad of instruments (accordion, electric bass, clarinet, harpsichord, even kalimba) coupled with the background remixes of the most memorable music from the 1971 movie (I've Got a Golden Ticket, The Candy Man) takes me back to those fond childhood memories, and at the same time, immerses me in a whole new World of Candy.

Do your brain a favor and start playing today.

You have so much time and so few levels to see! Wait a minute! Strike that. Reverse it.

- A proud Zynga employee

#WonkasWorldOfCandy

Fatality

Riding in the Celica with no driver; figure I should move into driver seat. A high speed crash at a T-intersection on my right throws flying debris. I swerve into left lane to avoid it and falling palm tree. Double back to investigate crash and find the dead victim under a trash bin.  He was transversely bifurcated.

#NationalLimerickDay

Zynga created a game.
Boggle With Friends is its name.
Install it and play
A game every day.
Worthy of worldwide acclaim!

Seeking solitude? Solitaire is the solution.

Singular
One
Lonesome
Isolated
Troglodytic
Apart
Individual
Reclusive
Eremetic

– A Zynga Employee

Ode to Boggle With Friends

By ghostly glow of iPhone’s ‘lectric light
On letter tiles my thumb swipes fiercely through
Going for high scores until late at night
Gladly defeating friends both old and new
Lexophiles rejoice with newfound zeal
Everlasting gameplay and appeal

(full disclosure: I am a Wordie, and a Zynga Employee)

Lepidoptera Survivor

I watched a butterfly slowly fluttering frosted wings until they detached. The wingless insect continued to forage, encountering and subduing an arachnid.

Confrontation

I beat up HJ when he entered through an automatic sliding door and executed a flying crane kick too early, missing my chin, my mirrored move caught his undercarriage and flipped him to the floor.

Double J

The 'Double J' is a racing venue featuring two courses whose start/finish lines face each other and immediately make a tight righthand turn.

On raceday, I forgot my glasses, and resigned myself to a day of fuzzy arms-length vision.

For some strange reason, TWO races were scheduled simultaneously that day - MotoX and Rallycross Trucks - and I had just put those two facts together when a motorcycle rider skidded across the finish line barrelling head-on towards a truck in the opposing race.

There were goggles littering the sidelines but thankfully nobody got hurt.

Refriending

Eager to celebrate their reunion, GH brings his friends to a store in a local mall that specializes in exotic alcoholic beverages.

SF is enamored more with the thick white fur carpeting (and the other shoeless patrons) than she is in perusing adult beverages.

It Happened

Finally.

30 Minutes or Less

BF left behind a red and black duffel bag in the men's locker room.

Juxtapositioning

There is a warehouse full of workers wheeling wagons loaded with stacks of white and dark chocolate candy bars next door to a tandem racing water slide without water.

Patrons ride down the slide on empty burlap potato sacks.

Fashion Update

JS and AM chat while wearing huge peacock-feather false eyelashes on their lower lids.

Swap Meet Search

In a swap meet parking lot next to a 50's-style diner are dozens of refurbished pink convertible Volkswagen Beetles on sale for $1,495. It's strange that they feature slim wheels and tires like those found on cars from the early 1900's.

At the swap meet, a young boy shops for a tomahawk.

Punk'd In Planes

Two female joggers (one pregnant) watch a single-engine aircraft with red pin striping buzz the park they're running through twice before it successfully flies between two narrowly-spaced high-tension power lines.

3-in-1 Show

Documentary on United States pennies mentions "zero-cent" blanks. One in our collection has a hole in the middle and is strung with fishing wire.

At a birthday party banquet, in a room with broken tiled-glass doors, there's a lenticular picture of me in a black sport coat, seated, and turning around from behind.

Attempt to distract Disney character enemies in order that the aggressor might kill the defender.

Morning Verse

Smoking,

car idling.

Spit in the air

lands on my forehead

in the fog before dawn.

DTV

Happy Cube <80%

Forklift

Broken rain gutter

Clogged toilet

Amputee Survival Stories

As an exhibitionist Chinese bisento artist I was severely injured in a battle when my opponent chopped off my leg below the knee.

Whatever Happened To...

At the occultism store in the mall, Marylin Manson tries to fill a bottle to win a prize.

I perform an impromptu Greek weather ritual by playing percussion.

Color Theory

Green and orange.

KS visits us in the park.

I draw an orange 'JS' in the grass, on either side of a walkway, with a boogie board.

Backwards Memory

Suicidal depression.

Working backwards through the dream to the moment I lost consciousness.

Trying to compose the thoughts and feelings into a New York Times bestseller book's opening paragraph.

Spiralling blackness, then small figurines pressing against my face and solidifying impressions as my body unfolds from its fetal position.

Crawling backwards like a wounded animal through the shallow backwash of discarded anniversary gifts and a sandy market bazaar.

Two dollars to join the buskers' band.

Earlier remembering how TL had brandished the absurdly giant steel shuriken. Another middle school boy grabbed it. In the struggle it ended embedded in a girl's upper back, missing her spine by an inch, and grazing her shoulder blade. She was mostly unharmed (physically) but I still had to retell the story to her mother.

When I did, she suffered a heart attack.

Circuitous

Walk through an empty hotel lobby.

Walk through a sleepy IHOP.

Climb a puzzle stairway with purple and gray stones in shifting patterns.

A failure slide leads back to the hotel lobby.

Feats of Astonishment

Navigating a snow-covered mountain peak, SL and Steve bridge a 5-foot gap by riding a recumbent bike (sans tires) across three steel cables.

Hand-me-downs

An inherited TV stand from an elementary school comes with an old 70's television.

Old textbooks are crammed into the narrow space between the CRT and the side of the stand.

In addition to the books are several slide binders filled with photos of school activities including a visit from Big Bird of Sesame Street.

Line 490

A video game character puffs on a cigar.

Real smoke emanates from the game console.

LA Traffic Jam Meetings

On northbound Interstate 405 just before the I-405 / I-5 merge there is a tunnel.

The frequency with which drivers passing through the tunnel will honk their horns is inversely proportional to the speed the cars are travelling.

DD hops out of his SUV to hand me a sipa sipa.

Where it Begins

In a German subway, a man is running to catch up to a snaking train.

The train is headed to where new beings are created.

Each being has two earthly parents and two heavenly parents.

Slide Show

Snapping photos

Blue, pink, and purple baby dragon

Pebble frog

Wasp and worm in the refrigerator

The Tall and the Small

Giants from across the street push away a lawnmower which I wanted to sell to our pregnant neighbor.

I forgot her name.

Career Change

I wonder whether to change the arrangement of my work desk: from public (facing into a corner) to private (facing out from the corner) in hospital administration.

Leaping joyfully along a hallway I notice gravity still exerts its familiar pull.

Landing on linoleum and sliding under an ironing board I stand to hug MR.

Coffee feels floatier, however.

Code

SC k-12 1-on-1 tank vassal.

Lawnmower

I noticed the backyard lawn had a 3-foot-tall cowlick of grass on it.

I told AL, an ex-coworker (who is a dream enthusiast) that for four months I have not been dreaming at all.

Outpost

A mother and daughter guard a vehicle checkpoint on a remote snowy tundra.

A man approaches alone and on foot, cautiously since they are known to him.

I'm Not A Morning Person

Neighbor's Yorkie vomited on our doorstep.

My son stepped in the dog vomit, then a pillowcase fashioned as a butterfly net.

You wash.

Underwater Home Video

FM bought a video camera.

An apartment complex dumpster was emptied, then filled with water.

Film shows a cat swimming and diving in the water-filled dumpster.

My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad

With his steely gaze that pierces through to the bowels of your soul, my Dad will make your Dad soil himself.

Guest starring, Cake.

Bat Country

We can't stop here!

A man walks into a public restroom in a casino. He's carrying a plush baby cow and vigorously shaking it.

A second man follows the first.

The first man enters a stall and closes the door.

The second man washes his hands at a sink opposite the same stall.

The man in the stall stops shaking the baby cow and removes a cell phone and a $1 bill from its mouth.

The man washing his hands begins singing the tenor tag from the song, "Go The Distance".

A third man receives a text message from the first man in a nearby video arcade.

A fourth man scribbles a note on a scrap of paper, "lost $4400 hold 'em poker."

Survivor Mars

Moisture farmers KT and SR stake out a claim of land on a downward slope in the center of the colony.

Separate but Equal Segments

A new Lego Snowboard Half-pipe building set advertises a separate set for 'Yellows', advertising on the front of the box that it's "only 15 miles away."

The Quarter Thief

In a pink-shag-carpeted room stand eight Ms. Pac Man arcade cabinets (two rows of four).

Each of them has its back access panel removed.

You can reach in far enough to grab the key to the coin mechanism, but not the key to the coin collection box.

Each quarter stolen from the room full of games provides you with 10 seconds worth of power to an electric shopping cart go-kart conversion.

How many oncoming SUVs can you avoid before running out of power?

Game Design Moon Jump

Episode #19:

The Design team builds a prototype for a rhythm-based air hockey / table tennis game.

Romantic Comedy

Kristin Stewart (Reese Witherspoon) tore a large piece of magazine out of my hands for the third time.

"You are such a child!" I barked at her while storming out of the crowded sidewalk cafe amongst murmurs and stares.

As I climbed a cobblestone slope a young woman tried to interest me in online postage.

Stunt Clip

spicy
bowl
of
ramen
second
floor
jumping
boy
lands
on
his
head

Improv

In a drama class, students are asked to ramble nonsensical blabber for two minutes.

I turned my blabber into song lyrics.

Then I found that I could float and push off walls as a swimmer does in a freestyle flip turn.

Business Trip Dad

(set to the rocking background music of George and Jonathan)

My dad goes on business trips but always comes back with presents for each of us.

This time he brought me an antique penny gumball machine. Instead of gumballs, it was filled with old pennies.

I glimpsed an indian head cent, but also a 1902 lincoln cent, which, I thought, was impossible since the US Mint only began producing the new pennies in 1909.

Survived By

The helicopter turned and fired a rocket.

The rocket rocketed and swerved through the air, then struck a tank.

The tank burned and ejected many flaming victims, some of whom succumbed to the fire.

The victims crawled and included a torsoless girl who tottered on her hands.

The girl cried and clutched an ancient secret book of geometry.

The book rested and mouldered in a dripping cave for a thousand years.

The cave yawned and anticipated the arrival of more survivors.

Opportunity Costs

Machinegun Mike owns a karate dojo where every employee is named Mike. He also runs a punchcard sorting service from the dojo.

Good Neighbors

Gertrude Tidwell lost his timepiece in our backyard.

We learned of this fact when he leaped over our fence, bursting a giant elongated soap bubble (which burst radiantly in a slow-motion rainbow) to look for it amongst the ice plants.

Recent storms had impacted and broken the sewage pipes with mud which drained into the Stanford water treatment facility.

Pop Corn

Grace Jones broadcast an annoying message about me over the intercom system at a Best Buy using my cell phone, then she threw it on the ground.

Outside, she was confronted by the Vancouver Canucks for public intoxication.

In the Neighborhood

Friendly fish follow me.

I tickle a catfish under its chin.

Two Koi and a rainbow parrot fish leap out of the water into my arms, then, they all mimic my movements like dolphins levitating out of the water on their tails.

My shadow follows me.

I jump along a sidewalk next to a concrete wall.

Trying over and over to touch both feet to the wall as high as possible, I think of a game with this core mechanic, set to 1970's 'classic' rock with a backdrop of muscle cars.

I am an Eye

I try to cash a check and attempt to make the irregular amount come out even by offering pocket change when the cashier refuses.

I mistake a toned Kennedy half-dollar coin for an older Walking Liberty half-dollar by holding the coin upside-down.

I ask to search the cash register for more coins while informing the clerks of United States half-dollar coin designs dating back to 1916.

I walk to catch a bus to the Los Angeles Convention Center and see AZ running to catch a bus in the opposite direction.

She fails.

Curry Western

Little ZS visits dad at work. They enjoy traditional Indian food.

They wait in the rightmost of two lines to ride invisible horses at a gallop across thirty feet of mud.

In a Box in the Bed in the House

RF (Emilio Estevez) and Steve (Keanu Reeves) left the business seminar shaken.

"What's that you're playing with?" asked RF.

"It's a jingling ball," replied Steve, who rolled the reflective silver sphere in his hand. It jingled.

"Wanna school me at Guitar Hero? There's one standing next to the popcorn machine."

"Only if you're paying. It's a dollar huh?"

The pair strolled across the movie theater lobby. RF pulled coins from his pocket as Steve spied a stack of smaller coins - pennies and nickels - abandoned in a box on the side of the machine. He emptied the coins into his hand, and his lips moved silently as he added up the amount.

"I'm thinking there's enough here. Hey look there's more!" Steve muttered. He indicated with a head nod the paper bills of different denominations littered on the gaudy carpet.

He continued to mutter, and collected the discarded cash, then paused to pick up a business card.

"I can't make out the name, Charles Golding?" he said more to himself than RF.

A caterpillar-like elderly man crawled along the floor and addressed Steve, still puzzled at the appearance of the card. "I'll be having that," he crowed and stared indeterminately in a random direction, his eyes unfocused.

Steve noticed that the man pushed a red and white striped stick ahead of him across the sticky carpet.

"Are you saying the dollar bills belong to you too?" called Steve as the man crawled into a bedroom. "Wait!"

Steve walked through the doorway in time to see the man crawl into a pink bed between two elderly ladies who watched a silent movie screen opposite them.

"What's going on here?" Steve called as he examined the paper money. One bill had an inky shoe print on the back. On another, a note was scribbled:

'en la caja en la cama en la casa'

Sliding on Hardwood Floors in Tube Socks Battle

CS: judge, fighting in the style of Judson Laipply in "Evolution of Dance".

LL: dancer, fighting in the style of Yu Chae Young in "Emotion".

BS: locksmith, fighting in the style of Dave Elsewhere in "7-11 Slurpee commercial".

All three contestants battle to the death in a fitness center weight room. Who will win?

Cars & Guitars

Red Chrysler minivan crushed into the outside bathroom wall as I used the urinal.

Walked through the music store after hours where guitars and amps had been set up in doorways; one tuned by B. B. King, and a giant 'drum tuned' guitar.

A coworker arrived with a lunch box and a violin case.

I'm Going to Wichita

I rode the orange Disneyland monorail coaster with the rear shaped like a 1971 Dodge Charger; pulls three G's around turns.

I rode with others in a large dome-shaped room with padded blue walls, floor and circular benches; easy to hose off vomit.

Through the night, I felt small jolting earthquakes that I feared would eventually wake my mother; they were really aftershocks.

Though asleep, I knew the tremors came from cars racing by the Tiffany lamp, towering overhead; it's in the corner next to my bed.

Think Happy Thoughts

Little cute bees. Little babies.

Tiny, tiny bunnies hopping, twisting, contorting, catching fireflies.

Kung Pow

Change
Focus
Commitment
Perseverance
Flexibility
Gastrointestinal
Onomatopoetic

Stream of Unconsciousness

Waiting in line to buy a dozen tacos from Taco Bell, doing dips on an old wooden fence, an old guy found a 1943 copper Wheat Penny in the tip jar and handed it to me.

"Lemme talk to you about a Dinner Party Action show," he wheezed.

"The worst feeling is knowing you could have won but didn't say anything," he wheezed.

"They wanted me to be a writer," he wheezed.

Threes

Lions in Awesometown.

Stolen money in a couch cushion, in a suit, in a church, in the left hand aisle, in the middle of a devotional.

School kids in a pew play a mobile phone Apache helicopter war game.

Apprehension, interrogation, confession.

Movie shoot on location: a Blackhawk helicopter destroys a Coast Guard helicopter and an 18-wheeler.

Remembering Lives Past

I once was Mark Little, then was Malik Shabazz.

Now I'm Phillipe Navau, and I like to play jazz.

Fade Out

Last scene:

Aang stabs me in the kidneys with two sharp sticks.

Podiatry Poetry

Crippled Joe Danger,
for rehabilitation,
rocks in a hammock.

Along with his dog,
Jelly-foot superhero
runs in slow motion.

Falling With Style

I pushed off the ground with my right foot, rising higher and higher.

Looking down to the gently sloping shallow concrete stairs I knew I was too high to safely land without injury.

However, with rising confidence and scissoring legs, I performed many more long lazy hops, skips and jumps, even pirouetting twice during one great leap.

Eventually my lofty bounds carried me beyond the length of the concrete and into a vast sandy gravel parking lot, sparsely populated by dozens of Airstream motor homes.

I glanced off the top of one of the silver RVs looking back longingly towards the edge of the sand lot, the top of the concrete stair slope, and beyond to the overgrown mountain peak where my journey began.

At the topmost stair, before ascending the rugged mountain surface towards the top, I sat to inspect my red Converse Hightop Sneakers.

I heard a couple of fellow travelers descending, discussing how the owner of the mountain peak had installed security fencing, scolding them for tresspassing.

My second journey down the stairs would have to begin from where I was then.

Again!

Random Tasks

I pitched baseballs through a second-floor brownstone window at an array of three basketball hoops, watching as they 'toilet-bowled' around the hoop.

I watched the last ball fall, snatched by a curmudgeonly old queen ant, and taken into her nest, a rusted-out, crushed oil drum.

Hoping to retrieve the ball, I tentatively knocked at the entrance to the queen's abode, but turned away when she gave me no response.

I walked away, taking down a delicate mobile from a ceiling joist as I passed, eventually exiting the giant hardwood-floored gymnasium.

I noticed another identical mobile hanging mistletoe-like in a doorway across the hall so I backtracked to replace the one that I had taken, noticing that the gym floor was now overgrown with plant matter.