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I wake up for the second time when the wife barges through the bedroom door with the dog scooped in her arms. “Something is wrong with dog,” she announces. The first time I woke up was when her alarm went off an hour earlier. The best of part of sleep is when you wake up to learn you can still go back. But this time I was awake for good.

“Is she sick?” I ask.

“No, she’s depressed. I think she needs an anti-depressant,” the wife says. There’s nothing wrong with dog as she pants happily in the wife’s arms. This happens regularly in our house. The wife is a therapist and maybe it’s like dreaming, where the brain processes the day’s events—the wife processes her work day by projecting diagnoses onto the dog.

She plops the dog down next to me in the bed, a scruff of brown fur and snout and wet eyes, and then leaves to take a shower. I roll the dog over on her back and she’s eager to play, snorting and wiggling. “You’re not depressed, are you?” I say.

Then I see it, the size of a sesame seed. As I become fully aware of it, it becomes aware that it needs a better place to hide, crawling along the dog’s belly. Ugh. A tick. These things are straight out the third or fourth circle of hell. Well, I’m out of bed for morning.

Processing. There’s that word again. I quickly process abject horror, shuddering disgust, and a memory of the time we went camping and a tick landed on my sister, my dad picked it off and killed it with a lighter. He did it so casually, a Salem Light between his lips.

I scoop the dog up and make a beeline to the bathroom to get the wife out of the shower. The dog loves this game, whatever this new game is, which involves me banging and shouting at the bathroom door like a gorilla. She playfully bites at my hands and makes pig noises. The tick clings on, just waiting for a more peaceful moment to gorge itself on the host’s blood before beginning its reproduction cycle and dying.

The wife holds the dog down and I get the tweezers. I can not do it casually. My hands are just slightly shaking. I’m fine with spiders and those bastard spricket things, but I have this thing about disease-carrying parasites. But even with a shaky hand, I expertly nab the tick on the first try. Videogame-playing reflexes. I’ve never used advanced calculus once in the real world, I use the small-muscle mastery of landing Mario on that impossibly tiny ledge all the time.

I flush it down the toilet and flush twice, just in case he got a little hope after surviving the first deluge of water. The dog leaps up, a little leery with this game, the one where she gets held down and prodded with metal on the wet bath mat. Not as fun you guys. Later the wife says “you’re good at dealing with crisis,” even though she regularly counsels people through crises and picking a tick off the dog probably isn’t one of them.

“The bed sheets,” the wife says grimly. That’s how she processes crisis. Completely stripping the bed is her solution to everything. Just in case we didn’t notice the dog was actually infested with other ticks that were now creating a blood sucking colony in our bed. Also, the dog is now forever banned from our bed, but that executive order will be ignored by the end of the day.

We change the bed sheets and struggle putting the fitted sheet on, which is always too short on one corner, when you can even find that corner at all. Ugh. Fitted sheets are another circle of hell, at least the sixth or seventh.

If you instantly recognize these, then you’re probably in your thirties and had no friends as a child. To those of us who know, they’re simply iconic. They’re like Ray-Bans and the Rubik’s cube, Tab soda and MTV. They’re the orange handcuffs from My Pet Monster, whom we’ll get to in a minute. My Pet Monster was awesome enough, but, but them orange handcuffs. Them orange handcuffs.

They had plastic links that broke apart when you pulled them. This feature alone put them on a pedestal well above the crappy plastic pair that came in my police toy kit. I didn’t pretend to be King Kong. I didn’t pretend to be the strongest human alive. No, I just sat on the floor handcuffing myself and breaking the chains apart over and over and over. Or occasionally, I switched it up by handcuffing the dog. Who looked at me, sighed deeply, and tried her best to fall back asleep.

Alright, and then there was the My Pet Monster doll that they came with.

Let me see if I can explain this thing. It was the Reagan years of two-income families and latchkey kids, so perhaps there was a collective guilt. It was the era of “friend dolls.” Toys such as Teddy Ruxpin, My Buddy, and Kid Sister weren’t just dolls. They were friends. They were hefty in size, weighing almost ten pounds and reaching two feet in length. They read you stories, shared your bike seat, and patted you gently on the back as you sobbed yourself to sleep over not having any real friends.

He was released by American Greetings in 1986, so basically, a stuffed animal released by a greeting card company. But like everything in the 1980s, it spawned a cartoon series, a direct-to-video movie, and the full smorgasbord of merchandise. But My Pet Monster was the coolest of the friend dolls. He was like that friend that shows up to your house with a six-pack of craft brews to share. A cool guy, not that like My Buddy. My Buddy was like the friend who comes over to hang out but when he takes his shoes off it smells bad and you suddenly become painfully aware there’s still two hours left of the movie you guys agreed to watch.

My Pet Monster came with those handcuffs to share. Which I promptly ran off with and never returned. Eventually, I gunked up the Velcro straps with dog hair and lint balls. Then I lost one half of the cuffs. I’m sorry, My Pet Monster. As a friend, I was scum. I left you slumped over in the corner of my bedroom for years until one day my mother asked if she could throw you in the yard sale pile, and I just shrugged coldly. You tried to make eye contact with me, but I just fiddled with my Game Gear and looked away.

Like an ex that gets fabulous while you just get fat, My Pet Monster showed me. Now he regularly sells in the hundreds to two-hundreds on eBay. But maybe somewhere, my old friend is still looking out for me, because I recently found a pair of them orange handcuffs at the thrift store. Excitedly, I showed the wife but she had no idea what they were. She had real, living, human friends growing up, whom she now disgruntledly follows on Facebook, while I follow mine on eBay.

Since every kid basically did the same thing with the handcuffs as me, they’re actually quite rare to come by. A pair of the handcuffs alone recently sold on eBay for $72. Which is insane. And since I found them for thirty cents, I basically have bragging rights for life. So thanks, old pal, where ever you are. And if you happen to see My Buddy, do me a favor and punch him in the face.

Now for old time’s sake, I’m going to go sit on the floor and break the cuffs apart forty-five times, handcuff the dog, chug a Hi-C juice box, and stare open-mouthed at the television drooling for five hours after that.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. The 1980s were weird. Take a slasher flick about a disfigured murderer of kids. Make a novelty talking doll out of it. Add poseable arms and legs. Make sure to advertise that on the box. Total selling point. Put it on the shelves at Toys R Us. The kids will really go for it.

And here’s the thing. WE REALLY DID GO FOR IT. I wasn’t even allowed to watch Nightmare on Elm Street and didn’t see it until my late teens, but like other kids at the time, I was completely sucked into the merchandising bonanza. When I think of Freddy Kruger, I don’t think of a psychotic who tortures and murders children in their sleep. I think of a nostalgic and iconic figure whom I really just wanted to be for Halloween.

Released by Matchbox in 1989, The Talking Freddy Krueger doll was controversial and didn’t hang around on the shelves for too long. And in fact, despite what I say about my cuddly nostalgia for all things Freddy Krueger, I most definitely would not have wanted this doll in my bedroom at night. You see, I was never scared of monsters under my bed/in my closet. I was far too intelligent for that. My fears were completely rational: like bees. Man, fuck bees. Or jellyfish. Or dolls strangling me in my sleep.

So it’s with all of this context that when I saw this Talking Freddy Krueger doll the other weekend at a yard sale, I had to have it. I even paid more than I normally would, although I still got a damn good price for fifteen bucks.

The box is in solid shape and the pull string function works like brand new. He spouts out fun phrases like “let’s be friends,” or my favorite, a shrill string of maniacal laughter.

Finding this book briefly inspired my next great life plan. The average game of Pac-Man lasts something like a minute and a half. And my average game of Pac-Man probably lasts less than half of that. I’m terrible at it. So when I found this book, my first thought was “oh cool, something neat for my retro gaming shelf,” and my second thought wasn’t really a thought but instead a moment of divine intervention. A beam of light broke through the clouds and shone down on the book while illuminating the world around me. In the distance, I heard a bluebird sing.

I could read this book cover to cover. Study it. Know it. Live it.

That dream lasted about five pages into the book when I reached the sentence: “I have attempted to put together an easy-to-understand guide to learning Pac-Man, starting with the simple beginning patterns and progressing to advanced ones—all diagrammed in detail on the Pac-Man schematics.”

Oh, Pac-Man schematics. You lost me. I am never going to be able to study schematic plans. I barely have the patience for untangling my iPod headphones. And I’m not ever going to remember the thirty-five different arrow directions of which way to go through the schematics. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. (And no, in fact, we are out of the waffles again since my last my post.)

Seriously. Look at this. Just look at it. This isn’t what I need to help me master Pac-Man. What I need is a Game Genie and a bottle of Adderall. Oh well, goodbye, dreams. I’ll be over here trying to see things in those Magic Eye picture books. (Still on my bucket list. FOREVER. NO I CANNOT SEE THE DOLPHIN.)

Finally, dinosaurs. There’s really not much to say about them. Except, well, dinosaurs. DINOSAURS. DINOSAURS.

The wife started it last month, when she brought home a box of the regular Eggo Homestyles. “Something easy for breakfast,” she said. Because sometimes cereal is exhausting and eggs are an odyssey.

To our horror, the box was gone in three days. “How the hell did we eat them that fast?” we asked. It was like an out-of-body experience. Because we don’t even really like these things. Do we? For God’s sake, they’re rubbery toaster waffles. I can’t even tell you what half the ingredients on the box mean. I haven’t eaten like this since middle school.

We shouldn’t be doing this. We’ve got to be adults about it. It’s just a kick, that’s all. You know, how we go on kicks with things. Then we’ll get of sick of it and move on again. It’s fleeting. A comet. A falling star. But man, something just feels so right about it this time.

We’ve gone through four boxes in the last month. We moved onto blueberry. Strawberry. Even chocolate chip. I didn’t even look the wife in the eye when I went to grab another one in the grocery store freezer section the other night. I just shrugged and she said nothing and the approval was tacit.

Every morning we engage in the ongoing waffle war. She gets up an hour before me. From bed, I strain to hear if she’s making those waffles. I listen for the subtle metallic tink of the toaster being pressed. If she’s having them, I’m having them. I’m not eating a measly bowl of cereal if she’s feasting on waffles. The next morning, it begins again. She quietly counts the waffles left in the box. Later, she confronts me.

“Are you eating all the waffles?” she asks.

“No! I had them once. Once and they’re already halfway gone!” I say.

“Once? I haven’t even had any yet,” she says.

“That’s not true. I heard you using the toaster this morning.”

“Oh, now you’re listening to me make breakfast?” she asks.

One of us is bluffing and one of us is eating all the waffles like a big fat pig that no one loves.

It wasn’t always like this. Life is basically a journey through waffles. There’s the waffles your grandmother served with the perfect proportions of butter to syrup. The ones you used to get late night and a little drunk at Denny’s. There were the kitschy road trips with ironic stops at the Waffle House. The smugness and authority of the ones you made at home with the waffle iron living in the city. You did the hippie flaxseed and waffles-from-scratch thing. The exotic chic of the Belgian waffle. The whole-wheat phase. The foray into frozen French toast. You won’t go back there again.

Is the Eggo habit a gateway drug into Pop Tarts? What’s next? Those frozen confetti-sprinkle pancakes? A slippery slope into Toaster Strudels? God knows rock bottom is when you’re desperately squeezing the last drop of frosting from the useless plastic packet.

Relax, it’s just a fling. So don’t get too comfortable around here, Mrs. Butterworth. And anyway, you’re a lie. You’ve never come to life and talked to me, and sometimes I think my resentment over it affects everything I’ve ever done.

Stuff. I’ve found it. We’ll start with this Tony the Tiger baseball because it’s not an awesome collectible or ridiculously rare holy grail. It’s just a random proofs-of-purchase send-away item from the late eighties. It’s just a random baseball. And yet I’ve wanted it my entire life.

I guess it was just one of those things I got hyper-focused on as a kid. I saw it advertised on the back of my Frosted Flakes box and suddenly nothing else mattered. I wanted this baseball so bad. People, I need caps-lock to properly emphasize this. SO BAD. I had dreams about it at night. And I guess I didn’t get it because my parents didn’t feel like buying sixty more boxes of Frosted Flakes or whatever it took.

My friend actually had this baseball and I even thought about stealing it from him. And it would have been the perfect crime, because he was the kind of kid who was always losing his stuff. I plotted the evil scheme for days, but eventually I decided Santa or God or the Easter Bunny would find out.

I don’t even know how or why I’ve managed to carry this memory into adulthood. It’s not like my parents didn’t bend over backwards to instill happy memories and fulfilling experiences into my life. But when I saw the ball at a yard sale last weekend, I handed over a dollar for it without hesitation, even if I felt a little sheepish about it. The random-ass-Frosted-Flakes-baseball-shaped-hole in my heart is filled in. I hope you understand.

And here’s Stridor, another piece to add to my junky Masters of the Universe corner in my basement. Seriously, I have the saddest MOTU collection there is. Figures with missing arms, paint chips missing, and not a single He-Man figure. Well, except for a random bootleg bendy He-Man who’s uncomfortably naked except for painted-on red underwear, and yet I don’t mind. I hope you understand.

Next, here are some garden-variety water-squirting toys. The Spit Balls are from 1988, and the other is a Street Shark, which is my pet favorite oddball Ninja Turtles rip-off from the 90s.

Found Robie the Robot. Robie was a mechanical bank sold at Radioshack that especially bombarded the shelves around the holiday season. Old Radioshack robots rule. Too bad this Robie doesn’t work. I nabbed him for only a quarter so it’s not a big deal. Besides, his motor gears always sounded as though he was on the verge of breaking, even when he was in brand-new condition.

The Ninja Turtles Movie Storybook. Which I honestly attempted to sit down and read straight through. I made it to page two before giving up my noble venture, and then I just looked at the pictures.

Star Wars Pop Up Books from the late 70s and early 80s. Most of the pop-ups and action tabs are intact. And when they aren’t, it’s totally okay because you find alternative-universe storylines like this:

Darth Vader fighting a puddle of poo. That was my favorite part of the movie.

The Mother of All Supersoakers, the CPS 3200. This thing is like a bazooka. It’s so big, the water had to stored in an over-the-shoulder seven-liter sling, which unfortunately is missing. As much as I’d love to rig up some kind of hose/water thing to get this thing working, instead I sold it on eBay for $55.

This amazing 1980s Star Tours hat from the Disney ride.

And finally, a Donny Osmond coloring book. Come on, you’d buy it, too, for fifty cents.

Also, bonus annotations from either an older brother or a spurned-fan:

I hope you understand.

Months are just numbers when bills are due. Or months are life. They are this massive important thing, the passage of time. Or maybe months are just the times when you can wear something and not come off as schizophrenic. For instance, wearing a bathing suit in summer, a time you know is socially acceptable. Do it in winter, and you’re either insane or in the Bahamas, in which case I’m hiding your status updates on Facebook.

The last days of March and those first few days of April, the weather is like a child hiding behind a corner, shyly peeking out. It’s okay to come out Spring, we’re all waiting for you. I also emerge for a perimeter walk around the house. I like this word, perimeter. House upkeep isn’t so much a chore as it is a soldiering. A duty, a pride.

It’s been a long winter and there’s lots of mending to be done. There are tangles of weeds, stamped down from sleeping all winter. There are also the tenacious new weeds, just born and full of life, dressed as flowers for spring. But I’ve always thought the dandelion gets a bad rap, although I have no reason to say that other than I usually root for underdogs.

Maybe I’ll power wash the siding, whatever that involves. Oh, suburbanite me. Is it really such a bad thing? Hiding out here in the cookie cutter houses. Except my house would be the cookie cutter that didn’t survive its harrowing trip in the dishwasher.

Besides, cookie cutters never work for me. I think I’m going to get this little replica, but instead I get a kind of. Kind of a shape. Kind of a Santa. See? That’s his hat, and that’s his sack of toys. And that’s—well, that’s an amorphous blob of cookie dough. Growing up, we only ever used cookie cutters at Christmas. The rest of the year it was break-and-bake. Better yet, Chips Ahoy. On sale. Two for one. With a maze on the back of the packaging.

Kind of an adult. Kind of a flowerbed. More like an experimental sandbox with some mulch in it. Kind of spring cleaning. We vacuumed anyway.

Our neighbor died over the winter. Unlike everything else in spring, he doesn’t emerge this time, and I guess that’s life. Insert some words here about the circle of life, something poetic, something meaningful. I need it to be meaningful because it scares the shit out of me. I used to think that was somehow my job as a writer, but I was young and in my twenties then.

He was an older man who lived alone. I talked with him a few times. He had a couple friends and a bunch of hobbies, and he didn’t seem any more lonely than in the way that all people seem lonely. The fire department had to break his front window to get inside. At the end of it, there was no grieving widow pulling shut the shades. They wheeled him out and that was that. The house has been dark ever since. I wonder what happens next.

I googled him to find his obituary, and I also found his prolific cache of Amazon.com reviews, mostly his thoughts on old Western DVDs, gardening tools, and a bulb planter that “has done the job well.” Four out of four people found that review useful. His bulbs came up in early March, even though it was still freezing at night, but they made it anyway. I guess that’s what happened next.

Months are just numbers that mean nothing to flowers. Flowers are dumb. If you rub a dandelion under your chin, it means you like butter, and that’s the only thing I ever knew about flowers.

The other day I went grocery shopping, which was a rare phenomenon in itself. I don’t have an attention deficit disorder, unless it’s possible to have the ADD flair up only in certain settings. In which case, you’ll find me unable to focus on a damn thing over in aisle four, riding the grocery cart like a scooter (it’s still irresistible), staring slack-jawed at the million different types of all the million things that there are.

The stars must have been aligned that night, because another rare phenomenon was occurring: I was shopping on a budget. Or at least, I was trying to. Soda in liter bottles instead of cans. Store-brand sour cream. Screw you, organic tomatoes. We’ll eat the pesticides, thank you very much. By the time I got to the cereal aisle, I was sweating. I was out of my mind. I was even about to buy generic cereal.

Let me back up a minute. Basically, I’m good for store-brand anything, EXCEPT when it comes to cereal. I had a scarring experience in childhood involving generic cereal. Look, my parents always bought me the Gucci premium-priced Frankenberry, Nintendo Cereal, and Cookie Crisp. I had exquisite tastes. But then I spent a week with a family member who only purchased the generic stuff. And not even the kind with the bargain-basement cartoon mascot on the box. No. [Insert pause for dramatic effect.] It was the bulk bag kind.

So there I was, twenty-two years later, staring down a box of Marshmallow Mateys, when something saved my life. And my delicate palate.

Rice Krispies Treats Cereal. One of the true breakfast holy grails and best cereals of all time. If anything I wrote before this was over the top, I assure you anything I write about the actual cereal is absolutely deserving.

It first hit the breakfast scene in 1993. From what I can piece together in internet research, it either disappeared for several years and just recently came back, was always available in certain regions while scarce in others, or has been known to randomly appear on store shelves, an experience that is akin to the Virgin Mary appearing to you in a dream.

And if you haven’t been blessed with a miraculous sighting, then you’ve been stuck with ordering it off Amazon and eBay, where it goes for $5-10 per box. Even at those prices, it has over one hundred five star ratings on Amazon, all apt with rapturous praise. They ain’t lying. This stuff is the crack of breakfast cereals.

Unlike the pre-packaged Rice Krispies Treats that have that weird, chemical paste flavor, the cereal is exactly like eating airy, fluffy, just-baked Rice Krispies treats. You could eat this stuff dry, straight from the box, which is what I’m doing right now as I type this. But I’ve been pairing it with vanilla almond milk and a cup of coffee, and it’s a part of your complete breakfast, just like the commercials always said.

You might be wondering how this stuff is even healthy. Well, it has Vitamin D. And Riboflavin, whatever that is. And even a whopping gram of protein. So there. And I don’t know why you’re wondering this. Breakfast isn’t supposed to be healthy. It’s supposed to be that ill-advised choice you make to prepare your body for the sugar crash around noon. Otherwise known as “lunch.”

Most cereals that I remember fondly from childhood just aren’t as good as I remember them. They’re not as sugary and sweet as they used to be, back in the wild west of the 1980s. But with Rice Krispies Treats cereal, it really is just as good as you remember. With this one, you can still go home again. If you can find it.

Man, I haven’t posted in a while. So I’m just going to have to tell you about my sais. That’s right, my FREAKING NINJA WEAPON SAIS. I bought them at the flea market last year — the same flea market where I’m pretty sure there’s a sign on the front gate that says you can’t sell weapons. And these aren’t rubber-but-realistic-looking practice weapons for little babies. Nah dude, they’re made of steel and the tears of dolphins.

So now I’m halfway to a life dream of owning all of the Ninja Turtle weapons. Dream big. But I have to hurry, because there’s a limited amount of time in one’s life where it’s socially acceptable to have deadly ninja weapons adorning the walls.

Dreams are milk. Some are full of fat and some are water thin. They’re sweet if you taste them in just the right way. Or they curdle and they expire. Some expire after childhood, like the one about diving into a massive ice cream sundae. Literally—like a swimming pool filled with ice cream. I mean, that’s a cool dream and all, but now you’re just lactose intolerant and besides, it would be sticky.

Some dreams expire because you give up. It happens to everyone. Don’t be too hard on yourself about it. Some dreams you forget, and then you remember, like waking up blank as a sheet, and remembering while brushing your teeth. Some dreams stop making sense. Some dreams cross paths and make you chose just one.

Ninja Turtle weapons are like that. Like if you want to do the parenthood thing one day. Because swords and blood and babies and stuff. So I’ve got to make it happen. Soon. A quest. I just have to find a bo staff and katanas. Except I don’t want to be boring and just buy them from the Karate Super Store. Which, by the way, I have no idea if that exists, but if it did I would go everyday and just randomly start karate kicking in aisle seven.

See, I want to source the weapons from the wild, just as I found the nunchuks and sais. It’s the difference between bringing a bottle of store-bought wine to a party and bringing one fermented with wild berries you personally sourced from the northern forests. Basically, anytime you source something from the wild, it impresses people.

Hey man, I bought these sais from a dude with one tooth at the flea market, where he was also selling a gallon-sized can of kidney beans for ten dollars, and I’m not sure if that was supposed to be an antique can for collecting or just a bargain for dinner. So. Are you impressed? Well? ANSWER THE QUESTION. ARE YOU?

The wife says she’s just impressed I haven’t accidentally lacerated my scalp yet. Fair enough. I’ll take what I can get.

We also had this conversation:

Me: I’m writing about my sais.

Her: What? Your size?

Me: Sais!

Her: Size?

That went back and forth for about ten minutes. We’re like old people now. That’s cool.

Spring is coming, people. Yard sales and sketchy flea markets are happening. It’s time for me to make this dream happen. And then maybe I’ll knock off a few more on my list. Like learning how to make balloon animals. That would totally impress people. Party trick and popularity and unending admiration for life.

This weekend the wife and I were slumming around a few ratty record shops and antique shops in Baltimore, the word “antique” being a bit of a misnomer. These are really just junk stores with some overpriced lamps for good measure. My favorite store has what appear to be slop troughs, set up in the front and brimming with junk: random door knobs, promotional plastic cups, baby doll heads, and swizzle stick sets from somebody’s beach vacation in 1988. That’s where I found a couple of sealed Skeleton Warriors action figures for just four bucks each.

Skeleton Warriors? Never heard of it. The figures were dated 1994 and made by Playmates. Right away I could tell this wasn’t just any old crappy action figure line. Playmates was the manufacturer behind the much-respected Ninja Turtle and Star Trek toy lines. And these strange skeleton toys were extremely detailed and fully-realized. The backs of the cards advertised a full slate of figures and assorted weapons. The figures were even individually numbered for the true collector. And yet, I didn’t have a clue about it.

I quickly went through the first three stages of random obscure toy-finding: mild amusement, feigned disinterest, and then questioning. What the hell was this amazing spider-skeleton thing?

I looked to the back of the card for help: “The peaceful world of Luminarie becomes the final battleground for the forces of light and dark. When Baron Dark attempts to steal the legendary Lightstar Crystal, he causes the all-powerful stone—”

Blah blah blah. I was lost at convoluted stolen crystal plot. But seriously. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS AMAZING SKELETON-SPIDER THING?

I rapidly approached the advanced stages of toy-finding: hastily searching on the eBay app, showing to the wife for no visible reaction, experiencing gnawing feelings of need, and bargaining with the wallet. Then finally, there was acceptance. Acceptance that I would buy this crap and live with it for next fifty years of my life.

Now it was time to do some digging, toy archaeology style.

The gist of it is this: we’re somewhere in outerspace known as Lumenaire. The power source for the whole city is some crystal. It gets stolen by some bad dudes and turns them into evil skeletons. Some good dudes are trying to get the crystal back. It was a science fiction 1980s-throwback cartoon in the style of Masters of the Universe and Bravestarr. The creators even saw it as a sort of modern-day Bonanza.

In a 1994 article, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed “Skeleton Warriors Ready To Hit It Big.” On paper, the show looked like a hit with the support of several major powerhouses. It was produced Landmark Entertainment Group, the company behind the Ninja Turtles Coming Out of Their Shells Tour and the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios. They had a multi-million dollar deal signed with Playmates to produce the toys nearly a year ahead of time. They landed a sweet time slot on the CBS network at 8:30am on Saturday mornings. They couldn’t lose.

The Tribune wrote, “if the toy line retains the look and craftsmanship of what we saw at Toy Fair, it’s going to be one of the top contenders for a 1994 Golden Toy Award for Best New Line.”

But Skeleton Warriors aired just one fleeting summer in 1995, lasting just thirteen episodes, nine action figures, a video game, a comic book, and a trading card set, before disappearing into obscurity and yard sale piles. What went wrong?

On the face of it, maybe it was the fact that Skeleton Warriors was only the second cartoon ever to be named after the bad guys, the first being the 1986 Inhumanoids. Kids like to support the heroes, but in this case, the heroes were somewhat bland humans with generic and forgettable names: Prince Lightstar, Talyn, Ursak, and Grimskull. It was like some weird conglomeration of He-Man, She-Ra, GI Joe, and Transformers.

And even then, if kids did want to buy an action figure of one of the heroes, they were no where to be found. Playmates had released the evil skeletons first. By the time the good guys were released, the show was in cancellation and the toys were already being slashed to the clearance section. One of the major good guy characters, Talyn, never even made it into production.

Still, evil skeletons, right? Maybe the show was too dark for kids. The beginning of each episode featured a introduction by a disembodied skull floating in the air with flaming red eyes and wearing a viking helmet. The effect is creepy and every bit as strange as it sounds.

One look at that creepy-ass floating viking skull and kids crapped their pants and changed the channel. If this was supposed to be my replacement for the Ninja Turtles, I’ll just be over here curled up in fetal position, thanks. It wasn’t that we forgot this cartoon because it only lasted one season, it’s that we collectively BLOCKED IT OUT.

But I watched a few episodes of the cartoon this weekend, and it’s surprisingly not bad. It may smell of a cartoon designed by committee, but there was true artistic intent at heart. Looking at some of the pre-production artwork, Skeleton Warriors wouldn’t have felt out of place in the heavy metal crowd.

I think the major downfall was that it was a cartoon out of time, clumsily sincere in an age of detached irony, an age of Ren & Stimpy, Beavis & Butthead, and The Simpsons. Even the themes of good vs. evil felt Reagan-Cold-War-era outdated.

1980s kids subsisted on cartoons that existed only to sell them a line of toys. 1990s kids were smarter and hipper—and so were cartoons like Animaniacs and Bobby’s World, winking and nudging back at the audience. The 1980s were about unbridled materialism. A front-loaded line of action figures didn’t dazzle 1990s kids into years of submission. The 1990s were about scoffing, albeit not out of any political ideals, but simply because we scoffed at everything back then. It was the grunge thing to do.

I liked what I watched of the cartoon. I found it highly-watchable and enjoyable, convoluted crystal plot and all. It’s a show about evil skeletons, and one skeleton wears a boa of other skeleton heads around his neck. DID I MENTION THERE’S A SPIDER SKELETON?

If anything, take a minute to watch the introduction on YouTube. It’s mind-meltingly awesome and may or may not have the power of a religious conversion. This weekend I discovered Skeleton Warriors, but in the end, I just may have discovered myself.

Do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder? Are you currently collecting comic books, action figures, stray animals, or stacks of newspapers piled to the ceiling? Do you check to make sure that the oven is off five times before you leave the house, and then ask your wife if she’s sure it was off after driving a mile down the road? Definitely sure? You turned it off? Do you pump gas to a specific price point or wait to get out of bed until a certain number appears on the clock? Are you asking yourself right now, is the front door locked?

Record collecting might be a great hobby for you.

Whether you have the kind of OCD where they make a reality TV show about you or just the endearing, socially-accepted Woody Allen kind, there’s room for you in the club. And trust me—it’s a better club than that one you signed up for in the 1990s where you got ten CDs for a penny and a lifetime of vaguely-threatening bills.

Don’t be intimidated by that cool kid in Buddy Holly glasses and canvas sneakers. Or the girl with bleached blonde hair and an official Record Store Day tote bag. It doesn’t matter if you can’t name any post-punk electronic indie rock bands that they only played on college radio in 2005. We also got guys with scraggly beards wearing stained t-shirts collecting Brenda Lee 45s. We got guys wearing tasseled-leather jackets looking for Dokken records. There’s no style points or rules in the club. Unless you don’t dig the Beatles.

Never trust anyone who doesn’t dig the Beatles.

Both OCD and record collecting are characterized by a set of obsessions and compulsions. Some of the categories include:

Hyper-responsibility: In OCD, it is an intensified and inflated sense of responsibility for actions and events in life.

In record collecting, there is an inflated sense of responsibility for the music itself. Because there are those who can never understand it. Those who don’t get the Velvet Underground. Those who like Kenny Loggins ironically. Those who think an MP3 sounds just as good, and that a CD sounds better.

Contamination: Excessive fear of, or avoidance of dirt and germs.

A record is a precious jewel that must be protected from scratches, dirt, gunk, children, and bad mojo. The record, one hundred grams of synthetic polyvinyl chloride, is protected in a paper sleeve, which is encased in an outer cardboard sleeve, then slipped in a plastic sleeve, then stored on a proper shelf, upright side by side and never stacked.

Cleaning/Washing: Excessive cleaning and washing even when no dirt is visually seen.

Dust is war. Don’t be fooled. That pop and crackle isn’t warmth. It’s the never-ending battle between good and evil. Invisible to the eye, hidden in the grooves. First there’s the stylus brush to clean the stylus that has a pesky habit of picking up dust bunnies. Then there’s the wet brush for the vinyl, using a homemade mixture of distilled water, mild dish soap, and isopropyl alcohol. Then there’s the microfiber cloth. Then there’s the anti-static brush.

And that’s for one side of the record, and then you turn it over and do it all over again. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Saving/Collecting aka Hoarding: Carefully and minutely inspecting household trash in case something “valuable” has been thrown out. Accumulating useless objects, for instance because they feel they may be needed one day.

The record collector is regularly hitting up the thrift shop, the flea market, the yard sale, and the record shop for inspecting, digging, and searching. The record collector may think nothing of picking up yet another copy of Pet Sounds, an album particularly prone to being owned in multiples.

Then there are the “useless” albums — however, they are the very ones that yes, you might need some day. Like the Rocky II soundtrack. There’s no question that Rocky I is essential. And Rocky III has Eye of the Tiger, even if the band Survivor sucks. But there’s no denying the power of fucking awesome montage music while you’re sweeping the kitchen.

But, Rocky II? Really? Well, you might need it some day.

Rituals: The OCD person will often develop rituals such as checking to alleviate the obsessions.

Every music fan has their own rituals associated with the playing of a record. Maybe it’s as simple as lighting a candle and sitting in a certain place on the couch. Maybe it’s as complex as running a humidifier in the listening room for eight hours beforehand to make certain no dry air static will affect playback, and then playing a test record immediately beforehand to get the stylus warmed up. Like the Rocky II soundtrack. There you go.

Ordering/Arranging: People with OCD also may worry about things not being “in order” or “just right.”

This is one of the most important decisions you make not only with your collection, but with your life. Do you go alphabetical? But that’s so boring. Chronological? Do you go chronological as a whole? Or do you add a layer of sophistication and go chronological within each artist? Except your brain will have keep this information handy at all times, knowing Stevie Wonder’s 1973 Innervisions goes before 1974′s Fullfillingness’ First Finale, even though both of those records could be parts one and two of a double record.

Maybe you should just keep it simple and straightforward: sorting by genre, within genre by era, within era by artist, and within artist by preference, alphabet, year, and something you saw in a dream once.

Need for Exactness: An overwhelming need or urge for things to be balanced; for example, needing to hold a cup of coffee with both hands exerting the same amount of pressure on each side of the cup.

Playing a record can easily turn from an enjoyable experience to an anxiety-inducing nightmare. You can start getting into stuff like adjusting the vertical tracking angle, where you’ll be whipping out your micrometric measure to determine the angle the cantilever makes with the surface of the record. The words “cartridge alignment” are enough to strike fear in hearts of anyone with an unsteady, clumsy hand. Then there are three little letters, SRA, or the Stylus Rake Angle, whatever the hell that is, but you better pray it has an accuracy of +/- 0.5mm on a good day.

Diagnosis: OCD. Or Record Collector. One and the same. Welcome to the club.

Treatment Plan: After all the cleaning, humidifying, adjusting, and praying, it’s been said that the only thing you really need to make a record sound good is a shot of scotch. Or some straight-up Xanax.