Tales from the Concert

                Normally I would start a story like this off in the stereotypical way of, “So, no shit there we were . . . .”  This time, however, I cannot really do that as I am referring to a story from my youth in which I was only sixteen.  I know what you might be thinking, “Sixteen, really?  Were you ever that young?  How the hell do you even remember that far back?”  Yes I was that young and I remember that far back because I have not consumed enough alcohol in my life to kill this memory.  Also, screw you for thinking that.  Ah, forget it.

                So no shit there I was at what was at one time called “The Summit” in Houston, Texas.  "The Summit” was an arena venue that hosted the Houston Rockets, the circus, concerts and whatever else the owners wanted it to host.  I had gone with my best friend to see one of those nineties alternative bands that was huge back then, but no one seems to give a shit about now, The Smashing Pumpkins.  We were both excited; this was our first alternative music concert and the first concert that we attended together, and we were ready to rock our faces off. 

                In total cool kid fashion my mom dropped us off at the main entrance to the venue about an hour before show time and we sauntered our way inside.  Once in the building we were treated to a visual menagerie of flannel, black finger nail polish on angsty youths, douche bags who were there only for the underage girls they hoped would find them deep, and some really freaking hot girls.  Our heads were on a swivel that had our necks hurting worse than head banging at my first Pantera concert.

                Whilst walking around we came upon the famed merchandise booth and spent several minutes debating on which shirts we liked, which ones we could afford, and whether or not we should get the same shirt.  After a few minutes we decided that we would both get the black shirt with the silver frowny face with horns and text that read “The World is a Vampire.”  As soon as I had my shirt in hand I put it on because I was too lazy to actually carry the damned thing.  My best friend, being less lazy than myself simply threw his over his shoulder.

                We continued on our trek of walking around to see what there was to see and eventually came upon the Green Peace booth that was attended by the afore mentioned “really freaking hot girls.”  We stopped for a brief second to “check out the booth” and ended up chatting with the girls as if there was the snow ball’s chance in hell of even getting a phone number from them.  After a five-minute conversation, of which I remember nothing but cleavage, we leaned down to sign the petition, or whatever the hell it was, while the girls probably gave each other that knowing look silently saying, “Suckers.”

                We stood up feeling good about ourselves and began to walk on to our seating section.  It was at this point that my best friend decided that he should probably put his shirt on as I had done earlier.  He reached up to take a hold of that magnificently expensive piece of fabric while I prattled on about the conversation we had just had with the interesting cleavage from Green Peace.  That was when I heard the words that to this day threw me into one of the most interesting spectacles of my life.

                “SHIT! MY SHIRT!”

                I turned to look at my friend, or at least the spot that my friend had occupied just a split second before.  I found myself staring at a cloud roughly the shape of my best friend that was rapidly dissipating.  

My friend, who is a husky “gentleman” standing a grand height of five foot four inches tall had already opened a distance of approximately thirty yards between us.  A distance that was rapidly increasing as he sprinted back in the direction we had just come and towards the cleavage of Green Peace.  I, being a skinny fellow and member of our high school football team, found it a rather daunting task to try and close that gap as I chased after him.

I only caught up with him after he had stopped at the booth and was asking the ladies if they had seen a shirt that he may have dropped.  Much to both our disappointments, they had not.  We began to back track our route knowing more and more with every step that we would not find his shirt. 

Suddenly, we saw him, a man that we had seen right before we stopped to talk to the cleavage that both of us remembered not carrying a damned thing in his hands.  Yet now this guy was walking with a shirt in his clutches that he could not have purchased yet as there were no merchandise counters between the Green Peace table and his location. 

A quick questioning of the guy as to how much that shirt had cost and getting the wrong sum as a reply told us all that we needed to know.  Unfortunately, without the burden of proof there was nothing that could be done.  Our first alternative concert music experience together was soured by one of the afore mentioned douche bags who was such a cheap fucker that he literally stole the shirt off my best friend’s back.

To this day, anytime my best friend begins to get too big for his proverbial britches, or I just feel like being an asshole, I will pull out the shirt and take a picture of me wearing it and show it to him.  After all, what are best friends for if not to make old wounds fresh and help you laugh about them while you punch them in the balls for being a dick?

Thanks for Your Lack of Service

                Over the years I have had countless people ask me about my time in the United States Marine Corps.  Usually I am happy to talk about and share my experiences.  This is mostly due to the fact that despite serving during a time of war I never saw combat.  Hell, I never even deployed to the countries where combat was taking place.  As I talk about my experiences I can see their eyes begin to glaze over because I am not talking about combat and how many people I killed.  Suddenly, at some point, they will say the one phrase that I know is a set up and that I know I will have to hear that one phrase that I truly dread hearing.

                “I could never be in the military,” they will say.

                “Why not,” I take the bait willingly knowing exactly what the answer is.

                “I would not be able to stand getting yelled and screamed at all the time,” is the response.

                When I would have this exchange with people I would merely laugh and assure them that things are not really that bad.  That was while I was in the service and for about six months after I got out.  Now, however, I usually just lose all emotion in my face and body language and stare at them silently for about fifteen to twenty seconds.  I study the person that I am talking to and try to find out if they are joking or really and truthfully as stupid as I believe that they are.

                Other than being called a baby killer while I was home on leave once, this has to be one of the most offensive saying that I have ever heard said to a member of the United States Armed Forces.  I do not know if the people who say this are trying to give us a complement for being able to take what they perceive to be an unending supply of vitriolic verbal abuse or they are so completely clueless that this is what they think actually goes on. 

Yes, in boot camp the instructors in charge of recruit’s training scream and yell a lot.  That is not because they are trying to be unrelenting dickheads.  There is actually a purpose behind it, and a damned good one at that.  It is meant to stress you out.  When you are in combat, when you are working on your thirty-sixth straight hour on the flight line, or when your naval task force goes to general quarters you will be stressed.  Stress is a part of the training.  Doing this help you learn to overcome the stress and deal with it in a more productive way than curling up into the fetal position and pissing your pants.  More than once I went a full week managing about forty-five minutes of sleep a night and getting stressed the hell out the other twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes of the day.  And that was just training deployments after I had graduated boot camp and my job school.

Truth be told, after boot camp the only time there was yelling was during the noise of live fire, meaning when we were shooting weapons, training, when I screwed up and deserved an ass chewing, or the person I was talking to was out of the range of hearing for standard speech.  Much of the time we actually sat around and chatted in normal vocal registers. 

The last time a person said that phrase to me I called them a coward.  They were using the most bullshit reason to justify not serving their country.  I understand if a person has certain physical, mental, spiritual, or philosophical “limitations” that prevent them from joining the armed forces.  But, to not join because you do not want someone to yell at you is ridiculous.  Most of us have been yelled at by our parents, teachers, coaches, and anyone else who was in charge of us and our safety at one point or another.  Of course they took offense, but they matched none of the prior mentioned criteria for my being able to tolerate their stupidity and cowardice, and I told them that.  I then followed it up with, “If you cannot take getting yelled at then I really feel bad for you.  Your handling of stress must involve a bottle of alcohol, Xanax, and rousing round of single player Russian Roulette.”

So, for those of you who cannot take having someone yell at you on occasion I say, “Thank you.”  Thank you for your lack of Service.  Thank you for not tainting my beloved country’s military with your presence.  Thank you for let the real men and women earn the titles of Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine.  Thank you for knowing you are too much of a psychological cripple to handle a supposed angry man or woman yell at you to help make you a better person.  

A Band That I Used to Know

                In preparation for a new addition to my family in the form of a baby girl I have been going through many of my belongings to determine what I can dispose of that will not actually impact me in the losing of said belongings.  I have been combing through drawers, cabinets, boxes, bookshelves, and even my CD collection.  While flipping through my collection of compact discs a few days ago I came across some rather interesting discoveries or re-discoveries, as it were.  This was where I can to several conclusions: a) younger me was WAY more musically eclectic that I am now, b) younger me was way more musically stupid than I am now, and c) younger me wasted way too much money on music.

                Up until the about four years ago my CD collection was immaculate.  That is not meaning that it was a perfect collection of music, just that my numerous books of CDs were not only in alphabetical order but also in alphabetical order by genre, year of release, or in case of multiple releases in the same year by album title.  Yes some of my CDS were scratched to hell and back, but they still managed to play in any CD playing device that I put them in.   

                As I poured through the books of CDs I began to remember listening to almost every album that I own and enjoying over ninety-five percent of the music.  I took a few of the albums out and threw them into the CD player to jam out while finishing the cleaning up of the office.  Almost instantly upon the first track beginning I thought to myself, “What the fuck was I thinking when I bought this?  More importantly, why the hell did I even like this?”  Seriously, almost every one of those CDs was crap.  It was crap when I bought it.  It was crap when I was jamming to it.  It was just crap.

                Instrumentally, the music is stock.  There is nothing challenging in how the guitars, drums, basses, and other instruments are presented to the listener.  Lyrically, the writing is on par with the poetry of between an eighth grader to sophomore in high school.  And much of this is from grown people who have been in the music business for several years and have several albums under their belts.  Oh sure, much of it has “shredding” guitar solos that rocked my face off back in the day.  Today, though, I realize that all the soloist is doing is playing scales really fast.  The singer is going on and on about the travesty of war like they are the first one to put into song the notion of war being a bad thing.  The song is completely void of any real depth or meaning.

                Then there are the albums where the singers are pouring their hearts out over the loss of love, the anguish of loss, and how much not having that one person in their life anymore sucks; all while playing slow, simple bar cords on an acoustic guitar.  Hell, these are Taylor Swift’s albums before there was a Taylor Swift.  For the most part all of this together does not annoy me, I still like Jewel’s first album.  However, when you take into consideration that at one point I had heard all of her albums and they were all the freaking same.  Sappy music, weepy lyrics, and melodrama.  Some of the songs have good vibe to them, but in the end, it is still the ingredients listed in the previous sentence.

  

              These days I seem to have gone away from wanting to listen to what is popular and current or classic and “Retro.”  I have a tendency more than ever to listen to the music whose lyrics actually inspire with more than just a catch phrase.  Music that discusses things which are important to us as a people, a nation, and a world community.  Music where it is obvious that the instrument players know how to play their instruments and did not just learn by reading tabs off some webpage and suddenly thought they knew what the hell they were doing.  I have also begun to listen to more of the classical music that I have.  I am not talking about Skynyrd and Sabbath.  I am talking about Mozart and Bach.  It calms me, relaxes me, and allows me to have something to listen to whilst thinking through things.  Hell, couple classical music, stroking my beard, and actual thinking and I will have world peace through domination down in a week.

Double Homicide, Hold the Mayo

Thinking back to my college years I remember that there was always this one guy who stood out in front of the main entrance to the building where classes were held.  He was there two to three times a week handing out little pamphlets.  He would have been almost invisible to me except that he looked and smelled like shit.  I mean that almost literally.  He smelled like he bathed about once a month and his look pretty much confirmed my suspicions.  Where he stood made it really hard to avoid him; at the top of the stairs moving to intercept people as they came up to get in the building.

I mentioned that he was handing out little pamphlets.  Apparently, this guy is a vegan and the pamphlets he was handing out were filled with pictures of dead animals at slaughter houses and the like.  The first time I passed I simply took the pamphlet, gave it a once over and then tossed it.  It was in my possession for about twenty seconds.  After that I began refusing the pamphlets.  In the short amount of time I had held that first one I had read the entire contents of it.  To paraphrase, “Meat is Murder, End the Atrocity, Go Vegan.”

Now, I can certainly sympathize with a portion of what this pamphlet was trying to say, at least in the pictures.  The animals should be treated with respect, period.  If they are being grown for the soul purpose of food they need to be given a better life that what they have.  They need to be given a life with dignity that they deserve before become a tasty snack to fill my stomach.  I have absolutely zero issue with many of the beliefs of vegans.  My issue is some of the people themselves.

Mr. Stinky eventually got tired of me rebuffing his attempts to continue to give me his pamphlets.  So much so that he actually followed me up to the door of the building.  Finally, one day in his attempt to pawn off a piece of paper on me, maybe the stack was getting heavy, maybe no else had taken one, maybe he just really thought that I needed one, he followed me into the building.  This was the instance that caused me to snap, and in front of the campus police department’s office no less.

I was walking and then suddenly there he was, in my face, barring my way to my destination. 

“You really need to read this,” he said. 

That was it, not only had he barred my way, he was now invading my personal space.  Suddenly I was no longer a college student; I was no longer a husband, father or anything that I had become since 2003.  I was back in United States Marine Corps mode.  To be more precise, I was in Non-Commissioned Officer mode.  For those who do know what that means, I took on the persona of Drill Instructor.  My face became redder than my hair, my eyes bulged, veins popped, and the only sight in my eyes was this little “fuck stick” standing in my way.

I will not post on here what I said; some of you may be scarred for life.  Just suffice it to say that my language, tone and volume were enough to get the police officers to pop their heads out of their office.  They instantly drew the conclusion that the guy they had seen handing out pamphlets had pushed too hard to hand one over to the wrong person.  The male officer quickly escorted him away while the female moved to calm me.  

 It shocked her that as soon as the guy was out of my sight I was no longer angry.  She escorted me outside and discussed the situation with me on the patio while I burned through a cigarette to help my body relax.  Cigarettes smoked, situation explained, body relaxed, and with class time rapidly approaching I excused myself.  After that the guy spent a lot less time hanging out on the stairs in front of the main building. 

I do not regret my actions that day.  The only thing that truly bothers me is that someone who I know was trying to do something good ended up doing something bad and that caused me to lose my temper.  Had he stayed out of my personal space I am sure he would still have been out front the next day handing out more pamphlets.  I do not know if he ever fixated on giving a pamphlet to anyone else, but for me it was one of the most annoying circumstances of my life.

So remember all you vegetarians and vegans, people might be willing to stand there and listen to your rhetoric, maybe they will take a pamphlet from you, they might even sign that little petition you have in your hand.  However, the second you violate the personal space of the wrong person you are liable to get slapped with a cheese burger.

The Best Burger Ever

                Over my lifetime I have devoured hundreds, if not thousands, of hamburgers.  The hamburger is one of my favorite parts of Americana when it comes to food.  They are so simple and yet so complicated.  On the surface it is just bread, meat, bread.  In essence, it is a sandwich with two big pieces of bread.  I have had beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and fish hamburgers, some better than others.  Many of these burgers have included a cornucopia of seasonings included into the meat from jalapenos to Thai spices. I have had a menagerie of add-ons and condiments on my burgers.  My personal favorite combination is simple: bread, meat, cheese, tomato, mustard, bread.  Simple and elegant. 

                Of all the burgers that I have had in my life only one stands out over all others as the “Greatest.”  In the second quarter of the year 2000 I was on my first field deployment in the United States Marine Corps.  We had made the trek from Camp Pendleton, California out to the Godforsaken land mass known as Twenty-Nine Palms, or as we Marines referred to it: “The Stumps.”  The name is a complete misnomer.  With all the times that I spent on that base, the only trees I saw were Joshua Trees; and those were located elsewhere from the portions of the base that I saw regularly.  The Stumps is a vast desert and mountain region with nothing but sparse scrub vegetation found intermittently about the base.  The only place that I have ever been that was more desolate and foreboding was the home of my step-grandparents when I was around the age of eleven or twelve years old.

                So, there I am, out in the middle of the desert for thirty days traveling from one local to the next.  Over this period of time I am reduced to eating Meals-Ready to-Eat (MREs) and field chow.  MREs are packed meals for between fifteen hundred and three thousand calories each.  Pretty nice when you manage to sweat out close to one hundred calories an hour just sitting in the shade due to the extreme one-hundred and twenty degree heat.  Field chow is a whole different ballgame, but still played in the same park.  It is generally canned vegetables and fruit served with either canned or dehydrated meat products.  I was never sure of the caloric content, nor do I think I want to know, of these meals, but like the MREs, some were pretty damned tasty if you like the taste of cardboard and Tabasco Sauce.

                Again, I survived on this fare for thirty days.  It is not that hard to do.  After the first few days, though, you begin to miss a few small things.  At first I missed fresh eggs.  The powdered egg product they served us in the field was just as I described it earlier, cardboard flavored with a hint of Tabasco Sauce.  The sauce was provided courtesy of my MREs, at least those that did not need the sauce for those meals.  After eggs I began to miss just about anything that was not prepackaged months in advance or powdered.  I was going crazy.  I traded cigarettes for candy bars, sunflower seeds, anything that was not military food.

                Finally, after thirty days of culinary hell, we were told that we would be making a trip to “Base Camp” for a quick resupply at the Post Exchange (PX).  I was happy; I had run out of cigarettes two days before and the life expectancy of my squad mates was dropping by the hour.  When we pulled into Base Camp an hour later I noticed a building with smoke pouring out of the roof.  I looked at my assistant driver and asked the question that would change my life.

                “What the hell?  Is that place on fire?”

                “No way, dude.  That is the base burger joint.  Let’s go get some smokes and then head over there” was his reply.

                After standing in line for cigarettes, and then puffing two in a row down outside, we walked to the burger joint and made our way in.  Upon entering I was confronted with two things.  First, the sight.  This burger joint was just sheet metal stretched over a frame with a kitchen in the back separated from the masses by a half wall with two registers on a desk behind it.  The floor was nothing more than the poured concrete foundation.  Picnic tables were arranged in rows from front to back.  The second confrontation was with my nose.  I smelled that great, glorious aroma of cooking flesh.  It filled the air, permeating every molecule.  It forced its way into every nook and cranny.  I was drunk on that alluring smell in seconds.  I practically ran to get my butt in line to order.

                After sometime in line I finally was able to place my order and receive my ticket number.  I walked away from the counter, giddy with anticipation.  I joined my squad mates at one of the picnic tables and wait for my number to be called.  And waited and waited and waited.  The actual wait time was no more than fifteen minutes, but to a man deprived of burger for so long the time seemed like hours.  I watched, jealously, hungrily, greedily as Marine after Marine that was not me was called to the wall and handed his plate.  Finally they called my number.  I do not remember the walk up to the wall or the walk back.  All I do remember before the first bite was the sight of two quarter pound patties of one hundred percent beef, three slices of bacon and two pieces of melted American cheese, all on a standard, store bought hamburger bun. 

                My hands trembled as I brought the burger, my precious bit of American culinary delight, up to my gaping maw.  I bit into it.  My taste buds were washed over with a tsunami of flavor and grease.  It was ecstasy.  It was Heaven.  It was Nirvana.  It was almost orgasmic.  All was right with the world.  Had I been looking in a mirror I would have noticed my pupils dilate like those of a heroin addict when they spike their vein.  Each bite was more delicious than the last.  Each crumb more scrumptious.  Each artery clogging taste was pure rapture.

                Gone was the taste of cardboard.  Gone was the need for Tabasco Sauce.  This burger had not been made and packaged more than six months ago.  It was not made from anything dehydrated.  It has not come from a can.  The patties had been hand patted and cooked on a grill that had probably not been cleaned in two years; just more fat for the flavor. 

                Soon it was all over.  I took my last bite and savored every chewing motion.  As I swallowed the last of that great concoction I turned my head to see that the line for ordering was even longer than when I had first arrived.  I checked my watch.  Only ten minutes before our convoy rolled out for another fifteen days in the desert.  Not enough time.

                I walked away from that table, from that burger joint, content with a belly full of beef, pork and American cheese.  When I sat down in my truck to await the signal to start it up my assistant driver looked at me and asked what I thought.  I conveyed my sentiment to him at which he laughed and called me a weirdo.

                Shortly thereafter the signal to start our engines was given and we drove away, back into the blazing, sandy inferno from which we had emerged only an hour before.  I still remember that burger to this day, more than a decade later.  No other burger has ever been able to taste as good.  This knowledge has brought me to the edge of tears more than once.  Never again will I savor that delectable, artery clogging, cholesterol raising symbol of a greater power than mankind.  If only you, the humble reader could experience that burger.  If only you could truly understand how unfortunate you truly are.  If only I could remember which entrance we used to get into Twenty-Nine Palms that lead straight to the damned burger joint.

Screw Your Team

                I have always had trouble understanding sports rivalries.  Not necessarily rivalries between teams, but between the hosting communities / cities.  It seriously boggles my mind.  Trying to figure this out has driven me to near madness more than once, and yet, I cannot for the life of me stop trying to figure it out.

                Let me start off at the combined levels of high school and college sports.  I will use football as that is the most ubiquitous of all the sports in the United States.  Sports team rivalries are in no way anything new to, well, anyone.  But, I just do not get how the rivalry of sports spreads to a rivalry of schools.  Nothing outside the hostilities between the sons of Ishmael and Isaac can compare to the rivalry between schools when sports are brought into the picture.

                Somehow, somewhere, someone decided that a winning sports team meant a winning school.  If team “A” beats team “B” then it is obvious that team “A” comes from an all-around better school, right?  However, in my experience this is simply not the case.  My high school football team sucked.  They were, and still are from what I hear, the worst team in the school district.  Winning on “the grid iron” was as foreign a notion as diving to the Titanic without a submarine and no scuba gear.  It just was not possible.  So does that mean that my school sucked at everything? 

                No it does not.  My school sucked at sports, a lot.  But when it came to academics, well, my school ruled the entire district for more than two decades in a row.  It had more yearly graduates who graduated with higher GPAs, more students bound for college, and a lower dropout rate.  This was my high school.  Still think it sucks?

                I did not attend a single college that had a high rated sports team.  In fact, none of the colleges that I attended had football teams.  One had baseball, soccer, and track and another had basketball.  The university that I graduated from had zero sports relations and I liked that.  It was one of the deciding factors for me choosing that school to finish my degree.  The only really sporty people in the school were those who just liked to work out or were in the Military Reserves.

               

                Now onto the “Big Kahunas.”  Major league sports teams have the wonderful penchant for developing rivalries the second they are thought of.  Dallas Cowboys fans were talking smack the second it hit the airwaves that Houston was getting an expansion team.  There was no team to yet attack, but yet fans of the Cowboys seemed to like “attacking the Darkness.” 

                Since 2002 the Cowboys and Texans have meet three times on the field.  The Texans won the first challenge and the Cowboys have not underestimated them since.  In fact, the Cowboys have bested the Texans in two out of the three games, and by pretty decent spreads both times.  Needless to say, Cowboys fans hold this over the heads of Texans fans almost without mercy.  But then cometh the stupid.

                Not once in the previous paragraphs have I referred to the teams by their city, only their actual names.  This cycles back to sports team rivalries are understandable, city rivalries over sports teams are pointless.  Dallas’ team beat Houston’s team so Dallas must be a better city.  That may very well be true, until you look at facts and not sports statistics. Houston has more jobs, better pay, and a larger population.  When the market fell through in later part of the ’00 decade people flooded into Houston looking for work, not Dallas.  Dallas got its fair share if immigration, but Houston took the cake, ate it and licked the plate clean.

                I am not picking on Dallas, merely pointing out that just because their major sports teams can dominate Houston’s does not make them a better city.  Some aspects of Dallas, like their lower crime rate, do allow for the argument that the Northern city is better than Houston.  But on the whole, Houston seems to have more to offer current and potential citizens.  In my not so humble opinion neither city is really better than the other.  They are cities in a state.  Places of residence, business and commerce.

Memory Lane with Cards

So, a few days ago I decided that it was time to sell off my old Magic: The Gathering (a trading card game) cards to help come up with some extra money for bills.  What they have actually sold for does not even come close to buying me a tank of gas in this day and age, but there you go.  The initial cost of nerddom is high and the resale values suck.  While I am disappointed that all the money I put into this game during my high school years has turned out to be a poor monetary investment just over a decade later.  It is kind of like trying to decide between the used 1994 and a new 2013 Honda Civic.  The ’94 just does not stand a chance.  This does not mean that I did not enjoy the many, many games that I played with these same cards; it just means that unfortunately my treasure is pretty much considered junk these days.

                Despite the disappointment in knowing how much my cards are worth in this day and age, there has been a ray of sunshine.  The ray is that of memories of games played.  Through all the recollections I can only point out two games where I just happened to have the right hand at the right time to inflict maximum devastation upon my opponent(s).  Both of these memories bring a giant smile to my face.  Not because I won these games, I actually lost one and rather badly, but because the card combinations just worked perfectly, the way that I had always envisioned them working.

                Recollection number one:

                Back in high school, circa 1997-1998, my friends and I all gathered in the cafeteria in the mornings to hang out and play card games with Magic: The Gathering (MTG) being the preferred game.  I was enjoying a rousing, if not slow going, game with a friend on one particular morning.  He was playing what we at the time called a “Salad Shooter Deck.”  This deck contained mostly monsters that resembled large fungi and could create more minor fungi monsters with only a minimal amount of spell points being used.  The main fungi monsters all had attack and defensive values of two (2) or more.  The minor fungi monsters had a straight “1/1” value where the first number is for attack and the second is for defense.  After about twenty minutes had passed my friend announced that he was attacking me with two hundred and thirty-seven of the minor monsters.  My life count was nowhere near that high and even if I used my own monster cards I would still not have been able to stop the tidal wave of fungi coming at me.  I was doomed.  Everyone knew it.  Game over.  It was time to put the cards away, conceded defeat, and head to class.

Or was it?

                As my friend reached for his cards, I informed him that I needed just a moment longer before I surrendered/died.  Looking through the cards in my hand I found what I was looking for.  The card I held up was the game changer, so to speak.  I smiled, extended my hand and offered to accept his surrender.  I was flatly refused.  He thought, just like everyone else at the table, that I was screwed.  There was nothing that I could do to stop him. 

                That was when I played the card.  I spent one spell point and laid the card on the table in front of him.  As he read the text on the card explaining the effect his eyes began to widen in shock and horror. 

                “What card did he play” a friend who was standing there asked.

                Another friend picked up the card and read it out loud to the assembled group.

                “Sandstorm, deals one point of damage to all attacking creatures (monsters).”

                At this point laughter erupts all around me.  My friend had spent twenty minutes and almost countless spell points to build an army that I had successfully destroyed in thirty seconds at the cost of only one spell point.  But, it was not over.

                With my friend’s turn finished and time running out before first bell I quickly scanned what cards I had on the table and in my hand.  My monster cards now outnumbered his.  I attacked.  His monster defended against several of mine and died.  With all of his monsters engaged with several of mine we calculated how much damage he took to his personal life counter.  He only had five life points left.  Another quick scan of the cards brought me to the conclusion.  I spent one spell point to activate a card and then immediately spent another twenty to make it more powerful. 

                With his army annihilated and his life points down to five he suffered the indignity of being hit with a spell that dealt twenty damage to him directly.  His life count was now at negative fifteen, the day was mine, and I collected my cards from the table.  As I walked out of the cafeteria, feeling like General Meade must have after the Battle of Gettysburg, I noticed my friend walking down the same hallway to his class.  I quickened my pace to catch up with him and offered him one final parting shot.

                “Next time, just surrender.”

                And with that I turned into my class ready for a day of tax payer funded education.

                Fast forward about a decade.  Yes, it took me a full decade to pull another great move out of my collection of cards.  I was at game night at a friend’s apartment and we had already run a gamut of various card and board games.  Finally the five of us settled down to play MTG.  We were all laughing and having a good time taking pot shots here and there at each other and stalking smack.  Early in the game I had managed to get out one of my favorite cards, “Craw Giant.” 

I love this card.  It does have a high spell points cost, seven points to be exact, but that is because it is a BEAST of a card.  The text on the card says that the monster, with attack of 6 and defense of 4 (6/4), has both Trample and Rampage: 2. The trample effect means that any damage dealt to a monster that is over the target’s defense goes onto another target.  The Rampage: 2 effect gives a bonus of two to the attacking monster’s attack and defense scores, i.e. one blocking creature makes the Craw Giant an (8/6) and so on for each additional blocking monster. 

I immediately cast a spell called venom on my card thus ensuring that anything that blocked him died, as that is the purpose of the card.  After combat is resolved all blocking creatures that did not die from your monster’s attack still die.  This was to discourage my friends from attacking me before I got the third and final card into my hand and onto my monster.  This process to another few rounds of game play, but, finally I let out a loud “WOOT,” paid the spell cost and placed the third and final card on my monster: “Lure.”  Lure forced all creatures owned by a player to block my monster if I attacked that player. 

I quickly scanned the table for my target.  There he was, sitting to my left, one of my best friends, who was hiding behind a wall of his own monsters.  I put on my evil grin and in my best Emperor Palpatine voice said to my beefed up monster, “Wipe them out.  All of them.”

 With that I declared who I was attacking.  My friend groaned, he knew what was coming and he did not like it, at all.  All twelve of his monster cards were forced to block my one card.  When everything was finally tallied up my monster had gone from a nice (6/4) guy to a (30/28) god.  When compounded with the venom spell that killed anything that blocked him it was no contest.  The round was mine.  I had enough damage left to deal out when I was done with his blocking monsters that it removed him from the game.

My friends were impressed.  Hell, I was ecstatic.  I had built that deck of cards two years before and had played it countless times.  NEVER, in all those times had I managed to get all three cards out on the table, let alone in the combination that they were thrown into the deck for.  I was elated.  I was overjoyed.  I was a king.

It was at that moment another player asked if my turn was finished.  I said it was and he promptly cast a card that gave him control over my own monster with both effect cards still in place on it.  He then attacked me.

Needless to say, five minutes later my cards were put back in their box and I was outside smoking a cigarette reveling in my short lived triumph.  Yes, I lost the game, and horribly so, but I had finally managed to pull off a move that I had dreamed about for two years.

Now, fast forward a few years more and here I am.  I’m looking through these cards and remembering all the battles, all the games, the laughs, the jokes, and general good times.  Then, I remember how much the guy at the store told me they were worth now.  My heart sinks a little and my gut ties itself into a knot.  With one last look at the boxes that contain so much fun I pocket the cash and walk out the door.  You can never go home, but you can carry the memories with you for a lifetime.