Today was Dad’s birthday. So here is a big HUZZAH to my one and only father, a truly wonderful person. 
And no, you’re not really that old, Dad…. 
I got him Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, and last night I sat down to wrap it. Normally, I love wrapping presents. I love to pull my secret stash of lovely papers, ribbons, and bags out from under my bed and use the colors and textures to create beautiful packages.
I think my gift-wrapping muse must have been away last night, however (must have been past her bedtime), because I somehow managed to let this atrocity make its way into Dad’s hands:
Sure, the blue pinstripe paper is nice. Yeah, the green ribbon is pretty. Even those bubbles and diagonal lines actually looked pretty cool by themselves. But the problem is I DID NOT KNOW WHEN TO STOP. In my late-night delirium I scribbled more and more and more silver lines that I thought would add “balance,” and discovered instead when I stopped to survey my work that I had created a Frankenstein-like patchwork of a present that looked like it had been puked upon by a Magic-silver-Sharpie-cat to boot.
Brian must have been suffering a similar absence of muse yesterday, because he showed up at our house with a present that looked like he had run a Smurf through a pasta maker and topped this poor box with its gruesome remains:
All in all though, I think Dad had a good birthday. We did fun birthday-ish things like having pancakes for lunch and lasagna for dinner, and watching two (count ‘em, TWO!) movies of rock concerts. (Stop Making Sense, a concert of the Talking Heads filmed by Jonathan Demme and The Last Waltz, The Band’s final concert as filmed by Martin Scorsese: both excellent films.)
We also went by Circuit City again so Brian and Dad could look at CDs and movies and stuff, and I ended up buying the soundtrack for Walk the Line, a movie with which I am very enamoured. Oh, for you photography buffs out there: I also spent some time playing with the Canon Digital Rebel XT they had on display there. I love how quickly it turns on and off and responds to the shutter button. It’s a little bit annoying that you can’t see anything on the LCD until you actually take the shot, but I guess that’s the hazard of an SLR, eh? I also loved the manual focus. I felt like I could be a lot quicker on the draw with that camera than with our sadly sluggish Powershot G2. And, as an added bonus, it fit very nicely into my smaller-than-average hands. I played with some of the nicer models of Nikons and Canons there, but they honestly were so bulky that they just would not work for me to use for an extended period of time. So, long story short, I am very interested in the possibility of getting a Digital Rebel…
Anyway, happy birthday, Dad! Maybe next year we’ll be a little bit, uh… less creative with your presents.
May 29th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Rebels are very nice. I know several people who own them and are very happy. two of which are very knowledgable people with tech and cameras and do their homework.
good choice it would be.
May 30th, 2006 at 5:10 am
Granted the wrapping job could have been better but I think it’s not too shabby. I think it actually looks pretty cool. But then again, my sense in style and coolness isn’t always… umm… the coolest?
Digital Rebel - Have wanted one for a very long time but there are other fish to fry before I get one of those nice beasties. I’ll deal with my old finepix for now.
May 30th, 2006 at 7:30 am
Hi Erin! Glad you found me!
Also, neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed a Rebel.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Well, unfortunately doing a google search for “how to run a smurf through a pasta maker” didn’t come up with any results. BUT, a blogsearch.google search found you, and only you, right away. heh
Mmmmmm Canon Digital Rebel…..
May 31st, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Lol! You rock, Matt. Now “how to run a smurf through a pasta maker” is officially logged in the search strings that have brought people to my website. My life’s aspiration has been achieved.
And btw, glad to hear everybody’s as keen on Rebels as I am… you will certainly all be (almost) the first to hear if I do end up getting one.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:11 am
Well, if you ask me, the wrapping paper looked quite snazzy. Maybe a negative point is that it looks like something my dad would do. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad, but I have to say, this is the same man who draws squiggly mice eating cats and birthday cake on every single on of my birthday cards…
June 1st, 2006 at 7:44 am
Kiwiqueen - Thanks for your comment! Lol. I suppose the wrapping jobs weren’t quite as bad as all that… but I do have a tendency to exaggerate things.
Also I think the late hour at which I was wrapping the present made me feel particularly defeated when I stepped back and realized that I had completely ruined the design I was trying to draw on the top, and that I was too tired to fix it.
As far as Brian’s present is concerned… I was mostly joking there, because he was actually rather fond of his shredded-Smurf-topped delight. (Typing that sentence just made me giggle at myself. Everyone should have the opportunity to write about a “shredded-Smurf-topped delight” in their lifetime.)
Anyway! Your dad sounds cool too. Any person that doodles on birthday cards is pretty awesome.
June 1st, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Yeah, just for fun I Googled an exact search of “how to run a smurf through a pasta maker” and all that showed up was this page.
June 1st, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Ryan, you rock too! Lol. I actually saw the search in my stats before I even saw your comment.