Olentangy Circle

When I was 3, we moved from Pittsburgh to Akron, Ohio, and we lived there for a few years in the late 70s.  We lived in a house on the corner of a cul-de-sac called Olentangy Circle.

Our house was very unique.  The family room had a recessed area with built-in sofas around the fireplace that we called "the pit", and upstairs we had a playroom with built-in bunk beds, and a built-in Snoopy doghouse that had foot holes in the sides so you could climb up to the bunk beds.  The light in the room was a stop light on a lamp post next to the doghouse.  We never were allowed to sleep in the bunk beds because we were too young.  My mother used the lower one as a changing table for my little brother.  The other thing about this house was that tornadoes were always coming through, and the brick wall around our backyard patio was always getting swept away.  Also, Akron is known for its rubber, so the Goodyear Blimp, which my brother called the "New Year's Bimp," was always flying over our house.  Also, we lived very close to an open field where hot air balloons would take off and land every weekend.  Our favorite was the Pabst hot air balloon.  I didn't know then how I would grow to love Pabst as an adult looking for cheap drink in Chicago.  There were forests everywhere, lots of places to explore.  We had a long, steep driveway that was great for coasting down on our Big Wheel.  We were allowed to pick strawberries and rhubarb and mint whenever we wanted and we were allowed to play in the neighbor's life-size playhouse.   Also, Chrissie Hynde's parents lived on our street, so sometimes she would show up in a really big limo and we would be playing Star Wars with her nephew and everyone told us she was famous, but we didn't know what that meant.  We were just happy to be playing with Ian's Star Wars figures because all I had to play with were the loose bricks from our torn-down patio wall and five severely jacked up Barbies.

For all of these reasons, Olentangy Circle was kind of a sweet place to live. 

[me and Mike in the Pit

Oh, look -- we're playing with boxes.]

So, while all this rubber was flying overhead, and we were living an idyllic-type childhood on Olentangy Circle with the lead singer of the Pretenders coming over for dinner and what not, down the street, Jeffrey Dahmer was just graduating from bludgeoning kittens for fun, to freeze-drying Filipino boys for dinner.  We didn't know that then, but it's good that we weren't Filipino, because we trotted past his house quite frequently on our little adventures.

We had another pass with death when we were in a pre-school carpool with the son of a man named Fred Milo.  Mr. Milo drove a Mercedes and he was very attached to the cleanliness of his floor mats.  In the winter, we had to take our boots off and put them in grocery bags in the trunk before we got in his car.  Mr. Milo is now serving a life sentence for hiring a hitman to kill his brother Dean because he thought Dean's body had been replaced by a robot.  It's a good thing we weren't robots, because things could have turned out a lot worse for us than just having to ride to school in a Mercedes in our socks.

So, besides all the murder, Olentangy Circle was OK.

Well, there were some other things, like, for example, on the first fall day when all the neighbor men were out raking leaves, which is how all Ohio men spend their Saturdays, my dad saw a group of neighbor men talking on the street, leaning on their rakes.  He went down to introduce himself.  The only man my dad knew in the group was our next door neighbor, a Methodist pastor.  Not included in the group was Penny's dad.  Penny was my friend.  I liked her for lots of reasons.  First of all, Penny moved to Olentangy Circle after us, and she told me that before she lived on Olentangy Circle, she lived in a hole in the ground like Bugs Bunny, and I thought that was so neat.  Second, Penny's dad drove a LeCar (it said so right on the side!).  Third, Penny had an outy belly button.  So, Penny really had it going on.  The other thing about Penny was, she had dark brown skin.  I asked her about it once and she said, "I'm not dark brown.  I'm black."  I knew my colors pretty well, and I knew that her skin was dark brown, not black, but I let her have her way about it.  Even if she didn't know her colors as well as I did, she was still my friend, and I knew that because we sat together on the bus.  Our morning bus to kindergarten also had older kids on it, and the 5th grade boys who sat behind us called her "monkey" and "n****r lips."  I was jealous that they had nicknames for her and not for me, until one day she told me that the names they called her weren't nice.  Penny never cried or anything.  We just sat there while they called her names.  But I still wished I had a nickname.  It turns out, when my dad went down to talk the neighbor men, they were having a very serious conversation, which my father walked away from in short order.  They were talking about what night they were planning to burn a cross on Penny's lawn.  It's a good thing we weren't black, because that meant Penny's family had to move away from Olentangy Circle.

So, besides all of the cannibalism, robot murder, and outlandish racism, Olentangy Circle was all right.

Well, except for Caroline Christiansen.  Caroline Christiansen lived in the house behind us, and she was what you might call "a bad egg."  Caroline Christiansen had a younger brother named Peter and a younger sister named Sarah, and they may have had parents, but Caroline Christiansen ran the show.  Caroline Christiansen was always siccing her dog on me.  Roofie was just a little terrier, but he was really barky and he scared me.  Caroline Christiansen knew that I was afraid of Roofie, so she never missed an opportunity to let him attack me.  One day I was going to a birthday party.  I had on a little dress and my mom had to change my brother's diaper, so she told me to wait downstairs and not get my dress dirty.  I went downstairs and I saw Caroline Christiansen outside, so I decided to go out and talk to her.  Caroline Christiansen had Roofie on a leash.  I was a naive little dumbshit, so I said, "Hi, Caroline Christiansen.  I'm going to a party today, but I'm not supposed to get my dress dirty."  Caroline Christiansen let go of the leash, and Roofie screeched over to me and started barking at my ankles and running around me in circles.  The leash got tangled on my feet and Roofie kept running around and around me till the leash was wrapped all the way around my body and I was lying on the ground with Roofie barking at me and biting at my face.  My mom came out and untied Roofie.  Caroline Christiansen didn't say anything.  She just came over and took the leash from my mom.  I got in trouble for getting my dress dirty.

Caroline Christiansen was in 5th grade.  She was kind of like an adult, so I always did whatever she told me to do.  Like, she once told me to use hedge clippers to cut off a neighbor boy's hair when he wasn't looking, so I took the gigantic hedge clippers in both hands and cut off all the hair on the top of Mark's head.  It's a good thing he had huge 70s hair, or else I really could have hurt that poor little kid with those huge hedge clippers.  I got in a lot of trouble for this, but no one ever knew that Caroline Christiansen had told me to do it.  Caroline Christiansen also told me to jump on the back of the ice cream truck, which I did, and the bumper fell off into the street with me along with it.  I got in a lot of trouble for breaking the ice cream truck and getting pretty badly hurt in the fall off a moving vehicle, but no one ever knew that Caroline Christiansen had told me to do it.

Suffice it to say, I was a really dumb little kid.  And come to think of it, if you were 10 and you knew a 6-year-old as gullible and willing to take bold action as me, why wouldn't you tell her to do stupid shit?  One day Caroline Christiansen rang my doorbell and told me to put on a knit hat. The hat was filled with dog poop from the neighbor's dog, Buffy. I was smart enough to not put on the hat. That made Caroline Christiansen mad, so the next day, she came over and told me that she had a club but I couldn't be in it. I begged to be in the club, so she told me to come out to the back of the house. There were a bunch of older boys standing in a circle.  She told me that I had to take off my pants if I wanted to be in the club.  I knew I wasn't  supposed to take off my pants, but Caroline Christiansen told me I had to, so I did.  Then she told me I had to take off my underpants too.  I knew I was supposed to take off my underpants even less than I was supposed to take off my pants, but Caroline Christiansen told me I had to if I wanted to be in her club, so I took off my underpants.  When I took them off, one of the boys grabbed them out of my hands and ran away.  Being fully de-pants, I squatted down to the ground just in time to see my mother looking at me through the kitchen window.  At first she was squinting at me, but then I saw her jaw drop and she started screaming and swearing.  She was yelling so loud that by the time she got to me, still squatting in the lawn with no pants on, all the older kids ran away with my pants and underpants.  That night, when we went to pick up my dad at the airport, my mom made me sit in the front seat with my dad while he explained to me about how I wasn't supposed to take off my pants in the outdoors, even if it meant I couldn't be in certain clubs.  I think we had this conversation again when I was 16.

So, besides all the Filipino-boy-eating, fratricide, lynchings, and child-on-child pervert-ism, Olentangy Circle was a great place to raise a young family. As long as you're not a black Filipino robot who's afraid of dogs.

Incidentally, Caroline Christiansen, Jeffrey Dahmer, and D.B. Sweeney all went to Revere High School together.  How's that for a class reunion?!  Just think of all the uses for a toe pick in that crowd!

Movie Review: 2012

There are two VERY BIG cinematic events happening concurrently as I write this.  One is Avatar.  Avatar is a fantastic movie, and I strongly encourage you to go see it, in 3D, and at an IMAX if possible.  If you do not have an IMAX where you live, what are you?  A lumberjack?  Forget about seeing Avatar, and focus your efforts on moving to a place where there are IMAX’s and telefax machines.

The other big movie that is out right now is 2012.  I haven’t seen 2012 and I don’t plan to and you shouldn’t either.  A couple of years ago, I read a book called 2012 by Whitley Strieber.  I do not know if the movie is based on the book, but let us assume for the purposes of this movie review that the movie is based on that book.  First of all, I have problems with reading.  I can read.  That’s not the problem.  The problem for me is retention.  I read Jane Eyre every year, not because I like it that much, but because I can't remember what happens.  There are moors, right?  And an orphanage?  And probably pox or plague or AIDS.  I can’t remember.  Does Jane end up with Heathcliff in the end?  I guess I’ll have to read it again to find out.

So even though it’s been awhile since I read 2012, I do remember that I didn’t like it, which upset me, because I have a sort of history with Whitley Strieber.  Even though you may not know it, you know about this author.  He wrote Communion over 20 years ago, and they made a movie out of that book too. The movie is called Fire in the Sky and it features D.B. Sweeney, who went to my high school.  The reason why you are familiar with this book is:

["I believe"]

GAH!  It gets me every time.  I'm going to for sure have to sleep with my parents tonight.

For some reason, I got my hands on this book when I was in grade school and I read it one weekend and scared the living shit out of myself.  In this book, the author, Whitley Strieber, who was already a published novelist, tells the non-fiction play-by-play of his encounters with “visitors” who abducted him and anally probed him, either actually or figuratively (if given the option, always go for the figurative anal probe).  I thought it was super dumb that aliens should choose to abduct and anally probe a published novelist.  It’s a sure way to generate negative press.  But they're ballsy.  They don't give a fuck.  They took him and they probed him and he wrote about it, and as a pre-teen, I read about it, and it ruined my entire fucking life.

Here’s why: I have to sleep on my back and with the lights on until I die.  Did you know that, according to Whitley Strieber, aliens, when they come into your room to take you up to their flying saucer, IMMOBILIZE you and then stand around your bed staring at you with their terrifying empty dinner plate eyes?  They speak to you through your MIND and YOU CAN’T RUN AWAY because YOU CAN’T MOVE, and they probe you in your eyeballs or in your bum and then you’re done for.  Once they have you by the ass, they do terrible and painful experiments on you and they make you impregnate their lady aliens, or if you are already a lady, they impregnate you with an alien baby and they keep you on their spaceship until you have the baby and then they take the baby and plant a chip in your skull behind your right ear and drop you off back at the farm where you live.

There is no reason for me not to believe that this really happened to Whitley Strieber.  As a previously struggling horror novelist, what possible motive would he have to lie about such a massively world-view-shattering thing?  So when I read about this strategy the aliens have of paralyzing you in your bed, I knew that I had to sleep on my back forever, because I couldn’t bear the thought of being immobilized while lying on my stomach with my bum in the air.  Also, even though they are tremendously technologically advanced and can communicate with their thoughts, aliens don’t seem to know how to work a light switch, so if you leave your lights on, you can kind of ward them off.

[NOTE:  When I was in law school, I was telling my cronies all these things I know about aliens, and my boyfriend and my roommate confirmed that I really do sleep on my back and with the lights on.  One of our classmates, an awesome, slightly older (probably like 28 at the time, which seemed incredibly elderly), black fella named Mr. Cox (we didn’t have first names in law school) looked at me very seriously and drawled in his soothing, southern way, “Ms. D-. Don’t you think, after these aliens travel a hundred million light years and come into your bedroom, they can FLIP YOU OVER?”  Touché, Mr. Cox.  Touché.  Still, I feel like if you’re sleeping in the dark with your butt out in the open, you’re just asking for aliens to come and put something in there, so I still like to sleep on my back.]

So I had this feeling of attachment to Whitley Strieber from a young age.  While I didn’t appreciate having my life ruined and my sleep forever disturbed by his book, I did appreciate his giving me good pointers on how to protect myself in the event of an alien invasion.  A couple years ago, I found out that he had written a new book called 2012 about the end of days as predicted by the Mayan calendar.  Like Communion, 2012 is 100% true.  I was about to head to Peru, so I bought the book to read on the plane and was fully prepared to take a lot of notes to get ready for the end of the world, which is apparently coming up.  In 2012.  He put it right in the name of the book, so I had that important piece of information available to me right off the bat.  I didn’t finish the book on the plane, so I put it in my backpack and carried it with me for four days while hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.  There are no lights on the Inca Trail, so I had to read the book while sleeping in a tent in 30 degrees wearing a head lamp.  It was kind of touch and go on the last night, because I really needed the bulb on my head lamp to last all four days if I wanted to be able to find my way to the bathroom at night (“bathroom” is a euphemism, I hope you understand).  But I really wanted to finish that book.  I don’t know why.  Half-way through, it turned into some kind of sci-fi thriller and it was terrible.  I think there were ZOMBIES involved.  Whereas extraterrestrials are believable, zombies are not.  What would the Mayans know about ZOMBIES?  The Mayans came WAY before Shaun of the Dead.  It was so stupid.  I hated it.  I was disappointed in Whitley Strieber, who I had previously greatly respected for his honest account of true events.

On the last day of the trek, we got up at 3:30 a.m. to make our way to the Sun Gate.  I was holding the stupid book that I was mad at myself for reading because I had to go to the bathroom SO BAD, but it was pitch black outside and my head lamp had gone out.  I didn’t want to carry the book in my backpack anymore.  I wanted to throw it away, but there is this whole thing about there not being any garbage cans on the Inca Trail, so I was just holding the book and not knowing what to do with it.  One of the men in my group saw the book and he asked me if it was any good.  I said, “No.  It’s stupid.  I’m throwing it away.”  He said, “I’ll take it.”  I said, “No. I don’t want you to read it.”  And because I wanted to make my point, I dramatically threw it on the ground and stomped on it with my muddy, llama-and-human-feces-covered hiking boot (there’s a LOT of feces in Peru).  He picked up the book, tore off the front cover (because it had poop on it), and said, “I think I’ll still read it,” and he put it in his backpack.  So that was that.

And that’s why you shouldn’t see 2012.  It has poop all over it.  And also, it was written by a man who has been anally probed, has an alien homing device implanted in his skull, and has part-alien/part-failed-horror-novelist babies flying around in outer space as we speak.

[D.B. Sweeney, who went to my high school, and

who played Whitley Strieber in the movie Fire in the Sky]

[FOONOTE: D.B. Sweeney did not actually go to my high school.  The movie Fire in the Sky is not based on the book Communion.  And the movie 2012 is not based on Whitley Strieber’s novel of the same name.  But everything else I wrote is true, especially the stuff about aliens.]