Floods Suck part 3 - IN 3-D! "THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL!!!" (read the other 2 posts first)

Okay, it's not in 3D and to be honest it was pretty personal last time too.  I hit you with the ol' sequel tag line bait 'n' switch.  I know it's a bit cheap and tacky but so am I, so deal with it.  So without further ado, I give you the third installment of the "Floods Suck" trilogy.  As you recall when we left off, I had thought that when Darth Vader sliced Obi Wan Kenobi like a kielbasi sausage with his light saber that he was quite obviously worm food.  The next thing you know I was running through the filthy basement water and I hear Obi Wan's voice in my head saying, "Hey why don't get out of the basement before you get yourself killed!"  So I took the advice of the disembodied Jedi master and picked up the pace.  Incidentally, although it was pretty cool that he could talk after he was dead, I fail to see how he [quote] "became more powerful than you could possibly imagine," but that's a topic for another day.  You know I suppose I could have typed this flood story in a single blog if I could stay on topic for any length of time, but I think it's pretty clear by now that that's just not how my brain works.  And isn't entertainment more important than facts anyway?  Sure it is.  How else could you possibly explain Fox News?


Meanwhile, Zach grabbed an instrument cable that was still plugged in to something and got a nice zap.  So what does Eddie do?  He says, "Are you serious?  Let me see that..." and he grabs the same cable to figure out how it was possible to get shocked with an instrument cable. Brilliant.  That's when it occurred to us all at once: We're all standing in water and holding cables connected to devices that are still plugged into the wall.  And not just any wall - the wall with the water pouring through it.  Wow.  Panic does not make for sensible decision-making.  So now a brand new panic sets in.  Hooray, because the old ones were becoming such a bore. We used a towel to grab and unplug the main power strips and I yelled, "Grab that, that and that and let's get the f--- out of here!"  Then Obi Wan said, "That's what I've been trying to tell you - jackass!"


Of course, we're guys and therefore inherently and idiotically don't know when to quit even when not quitting is a really stupid idea, so we did grab a couple more things each before we gave up.  We really shouldn't have, but it's hard when you're splashing out with an armful of stuff and you see something float by and you think, "Crap! I should really come back and grab that!" And then, to silence the small, more reasonable side of your conscience you add to that, "... but that's the last thing I'm grabbing."  It was pretty difficult to draw that line, but of course that line had to be drawn quickly.


We decided we needed to get a pump attachment for Eddie's wet/dry vac (we'd be using strictly the "wet" vac feature, not so much the "dry") so we can drain the water through a garden hose while we suck it into the vacuum.  We waited about 40 minutes for Home Depot to open and then headed over. ...along with everyone else in town. It turned out this was a pretty popular idea. I bought a vacuum like Eddie's.  It was the display model.  They had just opened and they had already sold out of wet/dry vacs.  Holy shit.  Now, although I say I bought the same vacuum as Eddie, the reality is that Eddie's is actually the 16 gallon while mine is the 14 gallon.  Now while that has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but it has everything to do with our relationship.  For the record we do have the same pump, so in your face, Eddie!  Of course, they only make one kind, but... whatever.

So Zach, Eddie, and I took shifts operating the vacs and pumps (it turned out that the vacs and pumps can't be run at the same time.)  This went on all day. It was loud, tedious, and worst of all, it was probably useless as well.  There's really no way of knowing if it made a difference, but we had to do something.

I saw my neighbor digging out by the street in front of my house. His plan was if during the 2 1/2 hour lull (because another wave of heavy rain was coming) we could re-route the water that was draining into our yards from across that street we might be able to save ourselves from further damage.  It sounded pretty brilliant and on top of that, I was fresh out of ideas.  He had a pile of shovels so all of us plus a few neighbors and my friend Justin dug for about an hour in the rain.  There's nothing quite like physical labor after being awake for two days straight.  By the time we were finished with that, I had nothing left.  I knew Eddie and Zach felt the same way, so I sent everyone home for some rest.  At this point we had done all we could.  I peeled off my cold, wet clothes and collapsed into bed.  Whatever was going to happen was just going to happen.  I would re-assess the damage when I woke up.


Well it seemed the homemade levee saved us from further damage.  I woke up later that night disoriented and slowly began to comprehend (again) the surreal events of the previous 24 hours.  I told myself for the thousandth time - everybody is okay.  That's all that matters.

In the end it's astounding how much stuff we were able to save, all things considered.  We did lose a lot, but a good bit of it was junk or at the very least questionable.  We lost some sentimental stuff but most of that was kept upstairs so it was safe.  It certainly could have been worse.  It took another two days to get a hold of a couple pumps to get the water out (the wet/dry vacs weren't doing the trick)  It's a very uneasy feeling to know that you and your family are going to sleep at night with that much water underneath you.  The walls are mostly cement down there so structural collapse didn't seem terribly likely, but it was obvious from the way the water came in that there had been a lot of erosion under and around our house so I was far from at ease.

Over the days of vacuuming and pumping the water out, on several occasions something would float around the corner to the top of the stairs as if it wanted to be rescued - bongos, a plastic drawer full of stuff (totally dry) - all kinds of stuff.  Day after day friends showed up to help: carrying everything outside, drying out cables, pedals, etc., hauling piles of stinky, wet garbage to the curb,  separating damaged stuff from possibly okay stuff, organizing, and a lot of cleanup.  I didn't have to track people down either; everyday friends would call and tell me they were on their way to help.  We have amazing friends and I can't comprehend what this would have been like to deal with alone.  It really is one of the more beautiful sides of human nature how we instinctively come together when tragedy strikes.  We hear a lot about the destructive and careless side of our kind so I think it really is important to appreciate the other side of it.  It might be enough to even slightly subdue my cynicism for a while.  Probably not, but crazier things have happened.

A week and a half later we still don't have any heat or ac but we did finally get hot water tonight.  There's still a lot to do, and everything still smells musty but the worst is way behind us.  I took one of the best showers in my life today.  My favorite part was how there wasn't freezing cold water pouring over my shivering body while I screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs this time.  It's the little things, ya know?

-Danny

Floods Suck part 2

Okay, it's been about a week since part one.  You've had plenty of time to get some popcorn and use the bathroom.  If not, tough crap.  Just pee in your popcorn.  It's story time.  Where was I?...  Oh yeah- so as the bear crashed down on top of me, my raw survival instincts took over.  With my sweaty bare hands I stopped his jaws from from clamping down on my face.  My arms trembled with exhaustion holding the creature's muzzle only inches from my own, his hot musky breath blowing my... wait a minute.  That's totally the wrong story.  Okay, well long story short, it was a complete misunderstanding.  It turns out the bear was only coming over to ask directions.  I was startled, I yelled, he roared and I completely flipped out.  It was embarrassing but in the end he was totally cool about it.  We're even friends on Facebook now.  Of course that's not to say that we're all that close these days, but you know how that stuff goes-  He has a wife and cubs now and... well, the family life can put such a strain on friendships, and... [*sigh*], anyway... about my basement-

Honestly this story is kind of boring compared to the bear story, but whatever.  The people have spoken.  So like I was saying: The water began to stream through the cinder block wall in a few places as if from squirt guns, and every minute or so I'd notice one more.  We were moving at a pretty good pace now although we soon found out we could move even faster.  All we were lacking was the proper motivation.  If you've ever seen a movie where a dam breaks, usually they show a few streams of water come through, then a big crack forms, and then the huge wave bursts through the middle.  Well, I never saw a crack. 

All I know is we all heard it break through and turned our heads at the same time and began simultaneously yelling.  I mean we yelled loudly.  It's impossible to constructively react instantly to something like that.  The only reasonable thing to do at first is freeze, stare wide-eyed, and freak out.  So that's what we did.  The water was pouring on top of my main desk where only minutes before that my computer and tons of recording gear had been.  At this point it was pouring onto my desk and about 60 or 70 cables that had been plugged into everything.  There was still a lot of gear in danger and as soon as we were able to make our bodies move we started grabbing everything as fast as we could.  Several times I froze up, staring and hyperventilating and Aerin had to pull me out of it.  It was just such a feeling of helplessness.  There's just something horrifying about seeing Mother Nature making a power play like that.  That chick doesn't screw around. 

The water was rising, everyone was yelling, "WHAT NEXT?!" and I pointed and panicked and grabbed things and ran like hell (rinse and repeat.)  It was complete chaos.  The sound of screaming and freaking being drowned out by the sound of waterfall, all of us running through the water frantically, things floating all over the room... I'm not positive, but I think I saw a string quartet playing in the corner at one point.  And all the while the brown water kept rising...

This concludes Part 2 of the three part series, "Floods Suck" by Danny Smith. Please check back for the thrilling conclusion!

Floods Suck part 1

So for the last several days Aerin and I along with our friends (who we are sooooo lucky to have) have been pumping water out of the basement while salvaging, organizing, scrubbing rust, repairing, and laying things out in the yard to dry.  It's far from done and it's even farther from fun, but we're making good progress.  Let me back up for minute and explain how we came to have five feet of water in our basement.  Oh, and did I mention the basement is where my recording and animation studio is?  Well I should probably mention that. 

I was counting tips Saturday night at work.  It was about 2:45 am. My friend Zach comes back to tell me Aerin has been trying to get in touch with me because there's been a little flooding in the studio.  Nothing serious, but she wanted to know if I wanted her to move anything just to be safe.  Looking back it's absurd we used the word "flooding" at that point.  I now know that what we were experiencing at that point was a few puddles.  The flooding would come later. 

So I grabbed a squeegee from the bar and headed home.  Zach said he'd come by when he was done in case I needed any help.  I told him it was probably nothing but he came over anyway.  The floor down there is really uneven, so there were a few places where the water was pooling a couple inches.  No big deal, we'd just squeegee it into the sump pump and call it a night, right?  Hmmm.  Why wasn't it going away?  I just squeegeed that spot.  For some reason we didn't seem to be getting anywhere. 

Then Zach found the leak.  Or the first leak I should say.  There's a five inch square-ish hole in the cement.  Normally you can look in and see dirt and rocks - the foundation, I've always assumed, although I've never understood why it was there. Days later it was determined to be some kind of poorly designed drain.  So water was coming up through the hole.  Obviously this was going to be a mess, so we called Eddie to bring a wet/dry vac.  Eddie is one of those guys that not only has every tool know to man, but he has really good ones and usually 4 or five of each thing.  "What size?" Eddie asked me.  "Oh the smallest one you have would probably be fine." replied the idiot.  Lucky for me, it just wouldn't suit Eddie's personality to show up with a five gallon vacuum.  It's more fun to show me how cool his biggest one is.  That turned out to be for the best.

We started moving a few things that were in puddles at a somewhat leisurely pace.  That was when I saw the water squirting through the cinder block wall behind my studio computer.  Holy shit.  Time to pick up the pace.  The panic began, although in a few minutes my idea of panic would never be the same...

Is Your Breakfast Cereal Poisonous?

Probably not, but who knows?  In our very recent past Americans were happily stuffing their faces with sugary, salty, greasy foods packed with saturated fat; we had families all over the highway who didn't know how a seat belt even worked; we raised our families in houses packed with asbestos and lead paint... And don't even get me started on baby stuff.  Rubber nipples, BPA laden plastic bottles, walkers, crib bumpers, stuffing our babies' faces with highly allergic food... Need I go on?  I mean, for that matter, the fall of the Roman Empire has been speculated to be blamed on poisoning from the use of lead in their make-up and attire.  Human existence has struggled to stay afloat since the beginning and has somehow succeeded so far strictly on a trial and error basis.   It's unsettling at best.


But at some point all of these things were considered perfectly safe.  Which leads us to an obvious conclusion: Certainly there are things we're doing and eating right now that are horrifically life threatening.  Some day our grandchildren will shake their heads and say, "I can't believe they used to watch TV without radiation filtering eye goggles!  Were they stupid?!"


So I decided to make a few predictions about some products that might be someday proven to be deadly or at the very least- a really crappy idea.  Only time will tell of course, and these predictions are based solely on speculation.  But isn't that what the Internet is all about?  Long past are the days of being limited to getting your information only from well informed, educated people!  Just think of all of the doors that opens up!  So unless you're one of those elitist snobs that gets hung up on "credentials" and "facts," listen up.  I've got some predictions to make.



#1

Let's start with those silver paper sleeves we use to heat up hot pockets.  They're just too weird. I don't think anyone knows how they work.  In the directions you're warned sternly not to use them more than once. Or what? What would happen?  Would it affect the space-time continuum?  And for that matter, how would it even know how many times you used it?  Can that thing count?  I'm telling you, there's something weird going on there.  It's disturbing enough that we're still not totally sure about whether or not the microwave itself is giving us cancer. 

#2

I know this subject has been worn out, but I have to quickly mention it: cell phones.  It's probably not as bad as some of the early reports, and no, it turns out they actually cannot pop popcorn, but I'm still not totally convinced we're in the clear.  My phone has so many signals going in and out of it at any given time (GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G...), it certainly wouldn't be a shock to find out at least one of those is farming lumps on my cerebrum. 

#3

Next on the list: "Safety Toys."  Kids' toys have been made so ridiculously safe, that we have a generation of kids growing up right now that are not ready for the dangers of the real world.  There was a time that if you cut yourself on your rusty Tonka truck, you went to the hospital and got a tetanus shot.  It hurt like shit and that's the day you learned not to be stupid and cut yourself on rusty metal.  We fell off our bikes without helmets and pads and decided that being reckless isn't an awesome idea because bruises, scrapes, and broken bones suck.  My son has a plastic truck.  They carefully designed it so that you can't possibly fit your finger behind the wheel and pinch it or get stuck.  You know what I learned when my finger got stuck or pinched in a toy?  Don't stick your idiotic fingers into small, dangerous areas.  And don't think for one second the toy companies care about your kid.  It's all about law suits, risk assessment, and the bottom line.  Let's not get side tracked though.

#4

Last and probably scariest: Zhu Zhu Pets.  Yeah that's right.  I said it.  Those stupid little robot hamsters that were all the rage last Christmas were quickly accused of containing toxins and yanking Jr.'s hair right out of his adorable little head.  Well that, and they were clearly strategically marketed by the U.S. Government to spy on us.  Come on people.  Open up your eyes.  Don't wait until it's been turned into a Will Smith action movie.  Those little bastards crawl all over our houses collecting information and reporting back to some secret government organization probably using our own cell phones for transmission.  I know what you're thinking: what about the people who don't have phone reception at their house?  Why do you think there were so many recalls?  That was the built-in backup plan.  They sent these furry little eaves-dropping, special-ops fuckers right back to headquarters loaded with all the information they needed.  The kicker?  These people even paid their own postage.  Double ouch. That's "The Man" stickin' it to ya twice, and he's sure as shit not gonna call you the next day either.  He should have at least been a gentleman and bought you dinner.

Okay, I've said enough.  Too much maybe.  My phone just rang and I have a sneaking suspicion the calls are coming from that black van out front.   I'm going to turn off my lights and lay low for a while.

Babies - The Free Ride Has Gone On Long Enough

The life of a baby is, overall, pretty great as far as I can tell. People make your food, they feed it to you, they carry or cart you around from place to place, they bathe you while you play with toys and splash them in the face, they dress you, buy you lots of toys to keep you entertained... you get all of this, and what's more? You're not even expected to show the smallest amount of gratitude. No baby's first words have ever been "thank you," and they never will be. Why? For the same reason you don't go outside every morning and thank the garbage man: he's just doing his job. My point? Babies have it good.

Well then, you say, what's all the whining and crying about? Okay, to be fair, there's another way of looking at it. You have to eat whatever your parents decide to feed you, you have to go wherever they want to go and play with their friends' stupid babies that pull your hair (and never get in trouble for it,) you have to get in the bathtub whether you like it or not and during more than one bath will undoubtedly have humiliating and socially compromising pictures taken which will quite possibly at some point be lost in the basement but will almost definitely turn up by the time your prom date is waiting for you in the living room sixteen years later, you have to play with all those stupid overly complicated, light-up, noisy toys they buy you, when all you really want to play with is measuring cups and Tupperware... I suppose it might be rough sometimes, but it beats working a shit job and being suffocated by debt, responsibility, and the conscience for social niceties. I mean, come on! You don't even have to pay taxes!

Alright adults, before you get all worked up and start making your picket signs demanding equal rights for every age group, I want you to put down your poster board and markers and remember this: we are the enablers. As with many of today's major problems and epidemics, it all starts at home. We've all been micromanaging these drooling little leaches for way too long in this country. And the result? Infantile laziness. Did you know in many areas of China most people have a job by the time they're six months old? It's true. Let me tell you, those kids appreciate a bottle of milk. Ya know why? Because they bought it with their own money. It's called "self-reliance," all you American babies. Look it up. Oh that's right- you can't read yet, can you? Well who's fault is that? Most babies in India learn to read in the womb and many have even published several works of their own before birth.

All I'm saying is, maybe I'd be a little further up my career ladder now if I had been instilled with the kind of solid work ethic that you can only learn from sewing khaki pants for the Gap when you're three. It's time these babies started pulling their weight. Change is in the air! I can smell it! Ummmmm... or maybe that's a dirty diaper.

Parenting and Piano Bars

I lean over to the drunk young bachelorette who obviously needs to tell me something that she apparently can't convey adequately on the request forms that are piled in the middle of every table. It looks pretty important too.

Bachelorette: Hey! Can you play that song... ummmm .... it's like - daaa daaa daaaaaaa - something, eyes and your hips...

Me: Hm. It's not ringing a bell.

Bachelorette: Yeah, it's like - unnnnn naa naa - eyes and your hips... Come on! You know it!

Her breath smells like the vodka and grenadine she been sipping through the plastic penis-straw that's become a "must-have" with every bachelorette party. Of course, when you're wearing a silver plastic, jewel encrusted tiara decorated with six hot-pink penises and the word "Bachelorette" across the front (in case anyone mistook the occasion for a tupperware party,) the penis straw is definitely the obvious, no-brainer accessory. Oftentimes bachelorettes will proudly stroll in with the 6 foot inflatable weenie under their arm. Because when you're really attention starved, a boring old penis necklace is just so... understated.

On a side note, in my eleven years in the dueling piano bar business, I've yet to see a bachelor party adorned in sparkling plastic vaginas and jeweled boobie crowns.

So, anyway... back to cosmopolitan-breath: Naaaa naaaa da, daaaaa hips... I know you know it! John Mayer does it!

Wow. And some lucky guy is about to commit and make babies with this fine specimen. Good call. I know a keeper when I see one.

Me: That's awesome. Hey, your friends are calling you. I'm going to play a song now for the other 200 people in the room.

I call my friend Zach to the stage to play drums with me on some Lady Gaga to make sure the bachelorette party forgets about any disappointment I might left them with over this nasty John Mayer incident. I follow that up with some Miley Cyrus for good measure, just to be thorough. The other piano player ends up playing drums for me instead of Zach though. Why? Zach (who is a bar-back) never made it to the stage because he had to escort a gentleman out who decided while he stood at the bar waiting for his drink, he would go ahead and relieve himself (the word "gentleman" in this instance is clearly only used to denote gender and not to imply social grace or stature of any sort - ironically, kind of like the sign on the restroom door.) Now, in this guy's defence, the restroom was clear on the opposite side of the bar.

Pretty typical stuff, believe it or not. By the time I get home, it's almost 3:30 am. By the time I eat and do a little reading it's almost 6. The sun's coming up as I'm winding down. I change into some comfy sleepwear and just as but hits the side of my bed, before I even lay back I hear my 11 month old son, Jagger, waking up through the monitor next to the bed. Sigh. Turn it off. No use disrupting Aerin's sleep. She never gets enough. I'm already up.

I go into Jagger's room and he's standing with his hands on the crib rail and he smiles, squeals and bounces up and down when he sees me come through the doorway. How can I possibly be annoyed at this point. Tired as crap, yes, but now I have a big stupid grin on my face. He has a stinky diaper, so I figure I'll change him, maybe read him a book, then put him back to bed. I put him on the changing table and clean him up. It's especially stinky, even for him. These days he likes to stand up on the changing table so we let him air-dry like that while we hold his hands. It's his favorite place to dance. So I was singing while he was shaking his little booty when he decided to relieve himself all over both of us and the changing table. Somehow it was less offensive when he did it. Maybe if the guy in the bar had been wearing dinosaur pajamas it would have been cuter. Incidentally, I don't know what it is about my singing that makes people pee.

By the time I get him back to bed it's almost time for my 10 year old daughter to get up for school. Well, no use in getting Aerin out of bed at this point. I'm already up. So I cook up some omelets, we do the morning routine and I drop her off at school and I get to bed at about 8:20. Jagger wakes up for his morning bottle at 9:30. My wife, Aerin, gets up to feed him after enjoying that one hour of time that we spent together/slept through. Then she does her best to keep her eyes open while Jagger tries to eat everything that will fit in his mouth. Again- all of it, pretty typical stuff.

Strangely enough, I learn things from my kids that help me to deal better with drunk people at the bar. Actually, watching over drunk people can be really similar to taking care of a baby at times. I mean, you constantly have to stop drunk people from doing things that could hurt them like, "Hey! Get down off the table!" or "You have to put your shoes back on. You could step on broken glass," or "You should probably wait to cross the street until that huge truck goes by." They also throw up on themselves, babble incoherently, and in some cases make boom-boom or tinkle in their pants (Yes our poor doorguys have actually witnessed this a 4 or 5 times while helping people to the door that have had a little "too much fun.") And like children, they get more irritable and defiant the later it gets. I guess the main difference is when your children aren't following the rules, you can't just tell them to leave. Kids are like drunks that you're forced to live with. On the bright side, when they're old enough, they mow the lawn.

Getting older - part 1

So what's the biggest difference in parenting two kids ten years apart? Well the main difference is that I'm older. Ten years older, roughly. So it's similar except now I'm sore, exhausted, and have a general overall feeling of physical shittyness. Is that a word? Spellcheck just said no; I say yes. When my daughter was a baby and would take naps, I could get some things done. When my son takes a nap, so do I.

Also, I've been amazed at how many baby safety and health rules have changed in ten years. It turns out that pretty much everything we fed my daughter is now considered baby poison. And keep in mind I was pretty "by the book" with her too. Apparently as it turns out, anyone can write a book, legally. The current list of foods the experts say you should not give a baby before their first birthday is pretty much all she ate her first year. Somehow she pulled through, but now we know it was nothing short of a miracle. It's amazing the human race didn't die off before these discoveries, but I guess miracles happen everyday (snort, chuckle, cough). Hmm...yeah sooooo, what else....

I'll tell you something that changed from my daughter's birth to my son's birth- I was better looking then. Not much, but I assume my peak must have happened somewhere in the middle. Ya know, someone should really let you know when you reach your peak. I don't know what I expected. Maybe balloons and confetti to drop from the ceiling and a photographer to pop out and take one last good picture before everything went to shit. Yeah, and if you don't mind, use that magic "Glamour Shots" soft-focus lens. You know- the one that makes ugly people blurry and shiny? The older I get, the more I consider carrying a big piece of frosted glass in front of me so that I'm always in soft focus. The bonus would be that the world would be in soft-focus from my perspective, which would be good considering the way the world seems to be increasingly harsher and crappier with each year of gained clarity and... I guess we'll loosely call it wisdom, but we know better, don't we? It's can't be wisdom because we don't learn from most of it until it's too late. And hindsight is usually too simple and embarrassing to be revered as wisdom. I mean really: what good is learning from something when you're too old and/or your life has become too boring for that situation to ever occur again? It's harsh, but you know I'm right.

Yeah, I don't think anyone really knows when they're at their peak. But there comes a day when you look in the mirror and realize you've gone downhill and you have no idea how long ago it happened. I guess part of the problem is that the optimist in me (who has long since been beaten down, silenced, and eventually imprisoned on the grounds of naivete and just general silliness) was hoping that I was just a really late bloomer and that at some point I would be pretty good-looking dude. So it came and went unrecognized and unappreciated. But that's what getting older is all about, right? Looking back at all the different ways you had it good throughout your life, but didn't realize or appreciate it at the time. Youth truly is wasted on the young. I guess what I'm saying is: Go ahead and make out with as many hotties as you can as soon as possible. Next year you might look like shit.