smiles await you when you rise

The Beatles, Abbey Road
The Beatles, Hey Jude
Thomas McGuayne, Driving on the Rim

Maya's record player came in. Playing records at the wrong speed is like commanding time, bending the three dimension by the bungee cord of the fourth + it's endlessly hilarious. The second Vintage Vinyl opened we turned $20 of her birthday money (Remember when you got birthday money? Me either.) into Hey Jude and any second now the UPS guy is gonna bring a vinyl copy of Abbey Road to our door. I'm picturing him sauntering up the yard like the boys do on the cover except suddenly finding himself caught in the spider web string between the camellia trees. Again. It is also endlessly hilarious.

You know what is also endlessly hilarious? When Maya and her friend do their impression of the growled smiles await you when you rise part of "Golden Slumbers". They have it down pat, as they should since they've done it straight for a week now, erupting in a cascade of giggles every time. They can't wait to get a hold of the album so they can do the smiles await you when you rise part AT THE WRONG SPEED! Imagine...

I wonder if some quantum event happens when something is endlessly hilarious, when a joke never gets old. Does time stop, or do your three physical dimensions stretch in a commiserate rate with time, kinda like how when two cars are moving at the same speed in the highway, they look like they're standing still? Except if they have spinners on the rims. Then I don't know what dimension that happens in.

I don't know what's up with me and the fourth dimension lately. It's like I got high for the first time and just thought it all out, man.

We went swimming and then to the lonely old Toys-R-Us for bike lights. I understand that most of the Toys-R-Us's in America are shuttered and ours feels like it is going to shut down while you are in the store, like the lights will snap off and the bored cashiers will just walk away and you and the six other people in the store will have to figure out how to get the formerly automatic doors to open. It will be a good practice for when the actual Rapture happens.

Anyway, it's been a while since we lingered in Toys-R-Us. We usually are grabbing something on the way to a birthday party or draining a gift card with something already worked out in advance. They got some weird stuff in there now, like the following:


This tableau re-enacting the gangsta rap/indie rock team-ups of the early 90's? The early struggles with gentrifying the forest to establish Smurf Village? I'm at a loss.


Arbeit macht Smurf.


At least Iggy Pop is not immediately racist, but who in Toys-R-Us wants this? Was Iggy a wrestler for a minute like Mickey Rourke was? They got a bunch of Iggies contorting away next to some forgotten WWE figurines. The record store should be selling these.

Then my wife made some killer chicken soup and we set our little bikes lights to blinking and cut across the golf course even though we're not supposed to and fuck 'em. We'll just bend time around the golf course fuzz if they show up or sic Hitler Smurf and Iggy on them.

Her record player also does 78s, so soon as I have the kind of evening a grown fella devotes to such nerdery, I'm going to make those YouTube videos I love, the ones of just a record spinning playing into the video camera's mic, of those old 78s that belonged to my step-grandmother. I played a couple yesterday afternoon and they sound great. The dusty static is the fourth dimensional connectors crackling suddenly to life, smiling as they rise.