#ray grabeel

[rottenattic]

North Texas Irish Festival 1994

Title: Ticket stub from the 1994 North Texas Irish Festival Date: March 5th, 1994 Category: Tocket Stub Current status: Scrapbooked The annual North Texas Irish Festival... since 1983, at the beginning of March, Dallas hold the NTIF to celebrate all things Irish. Last weekend was the 27th edition of the festival. I didn't go. In 1994 though, I was still in the early stages of my love affair with Ireland. That love affair started around 1992, but I'm not certain when. I was infatuated with the place. Partly because Ireland just seemed so magical and different, and partly because I thought I had ancestors from there (I have yet to find a strong Irish line... Virtually every ancestor I've found was born on this continent before the Revolution and they all came from England and France. I'm still convinced I've got a strong Jewish line somewhere). I had all sorts of touristy Irish crap around. CDs of "traditional" music, flags, shamrocks, leprechauns... whatever nonsense I could find. I subscribed to an Irish-American weekly newspaper, I wore green (never mind the fact that at the time I was drifting between Protestant and Agnostic.... definitely not Catholic), I watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People", followed the Republic of Ireland football team, and tried to eat corned beef. So of course, when the Irish Festival rolled, I was really excited. Ray and I went out there. It was (and is) at Fair Park out in that wretched hellhole known as Dallas. I don't remember a lot of details about the visit... I remember wandering around, hearing a lot of music, looking at a lot of stuff for sale, consuming some not particularly authentic Irish food and drinks, and just generally being amused by the spectacle. I think that year I bought this hideous green vest. At the time, I thought it was pretty freakin cool. Now, I don't think it's cool nor can I fit in it. I've still got it somewhere I think. If I find it, I'll take a picture. I know I went to more NTIFs than just this one. I believe I went to the '95 festival as a music reviewer for the TCU Daily Skiff. I must have been at at least one after 1996 because I know I've had a (terrible) plastic cup of Guinness. I think my last attempt to go may have been in 2000. Ray and I went out there with the intention of going to the Irish Fest. We got out there mid morning or so, but then thought it would be fun to go to the Science Museum first. Then, I think we saw some limited engagement movie at the IMAX, perhaps Fantasia 2000. next up, The Irish Fest, right? Wrong! The Titanic exhibit was at Fair Park. Gotta see that. By the time we got done fooling around at all the other things in Fair Park, it was getting dark and we were getting tired. We pretty much got up to the gate to go into the Festival, looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and went home. I have since lost my love of Irish stuff. I'll be honest here... a big reason why is that for the 5 years I worked at the Bull & Bush, I'd say 85% of the true Irish that I met were jackasses. I'm not the only one that has this impression either. And before anybody jumps all over me for being a jerk, I freely admit that I possibly did not get a fair cross section of the full Irish population... just the ones that like to hang out in bars and drink. You can draw your own conclusions.

[rottenattic]

Used Elvis Stamp

Title: Elvis Stamp, Used Date: Sometime after 1992 Category: Stamp Current status: Recycled Among the many dumb things that Ray and became fascinated with in the early 90's was Elvis. Not the young, popular rockin' Elvis... and not really old, fat jumpsuit Vegas Elvis either. Ours was some weird, hyper-amalgamated super Elvis. Probably more in line with old, fat jumpsuit Elvis, but more godlike. The big E used to hang around us all the time, usually possessing one of us in order to do things like try and get us to stop for food, explain his weird philosophy, or use the Elvis Side of the Force to royally screw things up and turn traffic lights red. Jerk. I realize this makes no sense. Perhaps down the road, I will go into more detail on the John & Ray version of Elvis. At any rate, I was giving you some background on why I would have this thing. Ray and I thought Elvis was ridiculous and his music was goofy. And so we decided to look for cheap, silly Elvis stuff. When the US Postal Service released these Elvis stamps back in 1992, we thought they were neat. We were disappointed it wasn't jumpsuit Elvis, but it was still a goofy looking image of The King. I bought some on the first day of issue and put them in a little frame. When somebody sent me a card with an Elvis stamp (might've been my mom... she would often play along with the dumb things we did although she seemed bewildered when we told people that she wrote songs for Wang Chung to help pay for grad school), I decided that I needed to also keep a cancelled Elvis stamp to go with the unused one. So it, like the unused stamps, the autographed photocopied picture of an Elvis Impersonator, the Floors-A-Plenty brochure, the Irish 5 pound note, the piece of cheese, and a multitude of other odd items, went up on the Wall of Stupid in my bedroom. The Wall of Stupid was an area in one corner that was covered in a black & white checkerboard plastic tablecloth (2-Tone Ska period) where I stapled any odd thing that I took a liking to. It was pretty well covered. I'm pretty sure I have some pictures somewhere and I'll be sure to share. Anyway, that's about it about the stamp. It was a stamp... with Elvis on it. Kinda boring really.