Stuffing My Inner Child Silly

I can’t stop pumping quarters into the mini NFL football helmet machine at the grocery store.

I feel like I’m ten years old again. This is probably because when I was ten years old I couldn’t stop pumping quarters into the mini NFL football helmet machine at the grocery store.

I loved my little helmets. I gave them positions and statistics. I created a system wherein they made plays, had contests, scored touchdowns and tallied up points. I recruited my family members to be a part of my Fantasy Football Helmets League.

The new helmets are a vast improvement. Many of the team’s logos have been updated. And they come printed right on the helmet, not on a sticker I would have to put on myself in the old days. The facemasks are more intricate and realistic. And they cost 50 cents, not 25.

Props to me for feeding my inner child, I suppose. Or perhaps another reason for my loved ones to be worried that I’m not spending enough time in reality.

Whatever the case, let me know if any of you other collectors out there don’t have the Kansas City Chiefs. I have an extra and I’ll trade you one.

The Fulfillment of Destiny

Tom Petty. What a fellow.

I know little of his personal life. I don’t know if he’s easy to get along with, is good at telling jokes, or if he likes playing mini golf with his grandkids.

But he sure does put on a swell rock and roll show.

Like any fan, I like to imagine him as a nice sort of guy. I’d like to think if I ran into him at a café and said hi, he’d smile and say hi back, and maybe let me catch a picture with him while we discussed the club sandwich on the menu. But I can’t be positive that’s how he would be.

I can be positive, however, of how inexpressively delicious his music is in person. Surrounded by drunken, shirtless Washingtonians, I experienced the grandeur of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers firsthand, smiling and clapping with glee like a schoolboy that just won a lifetime supply of frozen cookie dough. I have made my journey to Mecca, and can now die fulfilled and without regret.

Unless he goes on another tour within the next few years. In that case, I’ll probably have to hit one of those shows first.

Conquered I have, Conquer I Will

I, J.Clark Gardner, have achieved the unthinkable. I have embarked on the impossible and prevailed. I have done what every man and woman dreams of, but few have had the courage and fortitude to bring to pass.

I have dominated the beast that is the Rubik’s Cube.

In 1974, a Hungarian sculptor and architect named Ernő Rubik invented a six-sided mechanical puzzle he called the "Magic Cube," completely unaware of the mental and emotional calamity it would bring upon humankind. Renamed the “Rubik’s Cube” and distributed by Ideal Toys in 1980, the puzzle became a worldwide craze, flooding the hearts of men and women with frustration, anguish, and defeat at every turn. Today, an estimated 300,000,000 official and imitation cubes now occupy the dusty attics and forgotten junk drawers of the world.

Many of these cubes—nay, the vast majority of them—remain unsolved. But not mine. Under the tutelage of a wise coworker and with the aid of a modern technology referred to as “You Tube,” I gained the skills necessary to conquer the Rubik’s Cube. And conquer it I do, nearly every day, while watching television detective shows or conversing with my wife.

And I will be sure to do it in front of you, too, so you can be either completely jealous or completely confused at my determination to achieve this feat.