Scrooged b/w Frozen Danny (2013; 10 year anniversary remaster)

A Christmas miracle from The Electric Grandmother!

Brand new single "Scrooged" about the 1988 holiday cinema classic starring Bill Murray. B-side is the remastered version of the EG Christmas classic "Frozen Danny," about the episode of Full House where they get stranded in an airport on Christmas. Free download of course, we don't want your suck ass money, unless you're offering.

The album art is a combination of two AI-images, thank you to Lydia Glass for help with the combining. (This isn't an endorsement of using AI for album art, it's just a single and we were rushing so who cares. Looks pretty neat though). Mastered by the amazing TJ Lipple.

Growing up I didn't have a ton of toys because my mom thought having less stuff meant we were morally better than our next door neighbors, which why I was delighted the one Christmas my Aunt bought me a Transformer, Mirage of the Autobots. I couldn't have had it more than a week when my friend Gavin broke it in half while trying to transform it. I accused him of breaking it by being too careless with it, which he of course he denied as a future professional Tennis player (seriously, he has a Wikipedia page, I had no idea).

My dad offered that he could glue it back together, but only as one version - the transformed car, or the transformed guy. I chose the transformed guy, because I was always more into their personalities. The toy itself is I'm sure long gone, but I pulled this picture from Ebay, because the back of the legs is what I remember, but they got glued backwards I'm just now realizing after all these years. He was like President Skroob in Spaceballs after Snotty beamed him down. I had to fight for every Transformer after the fact, because my mom insisted "they broke." Thanks a lot, Mr. Tennis Ball.

I had a dream last night that I had won a contest to be some random person who would enter a wrestling ring and be assaulted by the wrestler Earthquake with his signature finishing move, which was a splash where he jumps and sits on your chest. I was worried about taking the physical abuse, especially after I learned that he was supposed to rough me up extra in the beginning. I felt really unprepared, even though I had tried to practice ahead of time in a makeshift ring with Anthony Kiedis, Flea, and Billie Joe Armstrong. When the time came for Howard Finkel to announce my name (something weird that was supposed to highlight the apparent douchiness of my character) to enter the ring, I could not find where to go. I could somehow hear Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura sounding impatient with their announcing, like “Where is (douchey name)?!,” and eventually they had to move on to the next event, pushing mine until later.

Eventually this became a tag team match, and I became Steve Urkel. I was still worried about what I now realized would be repeated splashes to be given to me by Earthquake, and that he’d possibly be farting on me. He didn’t appear to be the cleanest person, and besides, he had already put Hulk Hogan in the hospital on the Brother Love show. I then witnessed him practicing the "fart splash” on a lady wrestler, and it appeared that they were simulating the fart sounds with one of those old fashioned fireplace blowers, which put me a little at ease.

Hulk Hogan ended up being my tag team partner in a match which no longer appeared to include Earthquake, and instead I was to really emphasize my Urkelness against some random guy. The match started and I was in the ring first, and I walked into the wrestling ropes and they snapped relatively quickly. I turned to the crowd and squealed “DID I DO THAT??” which drew laughter, but also assurances that the ring wasn’t very well put together. I then began to get pummeled by the guy I was fighting, and when I went to tag in Hogan, they stopped taping because something else went wrong.

I went someplace upstairs in the arena to get away from it all, and I was in a kitchen area. Mary Alice came up to me and told me that the Steve Urkel she knew would use his brains and not his brawn to better this awkward situation. I stood there for a brief time in the kitchen, and when I emerged I realized I had been replaced with a more athletic and handsome version of Urkel-me, and they had finished what now was a basketball game without me. I was saddened but also relieved, because I just wanted to get it all over with. Besides, Donald Trump was there, and I avoided having to interact with him as a result of missing the game. They said they were wondering where I was and were looking for me, but I didn’t think they looked too hard. We sat and watched the playback of the game, and they had cut most of the video I was in. Again, I didn’t care, I just wanted it to be done.

c.1992

Generally speaking, 9th Grade was the final year where I was bullied in any significant manner, before my body and my hair both grew. I think of my experience of 5th Grade - 9th Grade as sort of the "hell years," where I wasn't able to focus on anything but survival. I went from being a great student to an anxious wreck who flunked every class, while somehow getting advanced to the following grade by the skin of my teeth. (That would end in 10th Grade where I actually did end up getting flunked before eventually dropping out, but those are different stories).

One day in a 9th Grade math class, we got an odd assignment of sorts from a teacher who was a temporary replacement for our normal teacher.  After taking a one-page quiz, she asked us to "Write a message to a 3rd Grade class about the importance of math" on the flip side of the page. I later claimed to think this assignment was for a theoretical group of 3rd Graders, but I think I knew that there were real kids that were going to see it. In my full smart ass mode, I wrote two sentences to the children, the first line was something to the effect of "Haha, you suck, etc," but I was quite proud of the second sentence that I certainly remember which was "Tell your ugly friends to go lick a donkey."

Later that day, my friend Scott who at the time was sort of my rascally partner-in-crime at the time, told me that the teacher read what I wrote and was going to call my mom to tell her. In a sudden panic, I asked Scott what he wrote, assuming it would be something similar. He shrugged and said that he wrote something normal to the kids about how we use math in our daily lives.  I felt so betrayed, just as I had felt overall around this period. When had it suddenly become cool to stop getting in trouble and be a lameoid thinking about your future? The other kids had successfully been able to beat the kid who used to get good grades out of me, but now they were mature enough to know that it was important?  I had finally arrived for everyone, and now they were abandoning me and changing the rules.

I ended up walking back to the classroom where the teacher still was, and I played dumb and asked her if she thought what I was wrote was funny.  She said she did not, and that she had called my mom to tell her about it.  I pretended to be incredulous at this, and verbally protested to no avail. I don't think I realized that my mom was actually going to come to school because of this, but at the end of the day there she was standing in the front lobby with that familiar sickly pale and enraged look. She asked me what I thought my Church Youth Group leader would think if she was shown what I had written about "Licking a donkey's genitals," to which I corrected her and said that I had merely written "Lick a donkey," which unbelievably seemed to diffuse the situation some. 

I don't know how else to end this except to say to all the kids out there that if you're going to talk about licking a donkey, don't mention their genitals or you'll really be in trouble.

The woman hired a carpenter to install shelves in her closet for shoes.  He installed it,  but she didn't like because it was made out of oak.  She said she wouldn't pay him, and he was mad. She found out she was listening to her, and called him names.  He saw the birthmark she had.  She later pushed him overboard, and he was fired.

He went to a mental institution where she was after she also fell overboard, and said she was his wife and took her home to this boys.  They were mean, and he was mean to her.  She started to like how he was mean, and fell in love.  This made him feel guilty, and he said that was going to tell her she wasn't his wife, but the boys kept lying about it.  Sex

Later her first husband found her, and came to their house in a limo.  She remembered who he was, and they left. She was sad after that, because she missed him.  They went on the boat again, but she wanted to leave.  She jump in the water, and swam to him.  In conclusion, she went back to who she was after she had amnesia.

The stuff that we accumulate over the years and choose to hang on to is pretty amazing to think about. Due to moving stuff around and trying to find places to put things, this cassette single of “This DJ” by Warren G has been laying next to the closet of our music room for months. I think I bought it on a whim at a second hand shop in Hawaii in the late 90’s. I never thought I’d be thinking about it every day, here in Washington DC, in the year 2023.

Late 1994/Early 1995(?)

I really don’t remember how it all came about, all I know is that one morning while in high school I got pulled out of a classroom by my dad and we drove away to a place in a nearby city that I’ve always referred to as “The Clinic.” In reality, it was an outpatient therapy group for naughty and wayward teens - which again, I don’t recall agreeing to do, but fuck it, I was told I’d miss school for two weeks. Apparently as I left the school with my dad, other kids were watching out of the windows and speculating about what was happening, the prevailing thought being that I was being taken to rehab. That wasn’t the case (as I was at best a casual pot user), but I did end up in a small group with kids who were in rehab. I was just there because I was failing out of school, angry, anxious, depressed, and an all around ne'er-do-well. In other words, pretty darn cool.

I arrived at a doctor’s office and went upstairs and waited for the other scumbags to arrive. While waiting, I observed a young married couple discussing how “(Name) had been drinking water from the potted plants.” Based on all the turmoil and angst I had been used to, I assumed they were talking about their fucked-up child (it dawned on me years later that they were likely talking about a dog). The first person who arrived was this cute girl who had sort of a combo alternative rock/citified look, and she ended up being my buddy. She seemed to be able to relate to the thoughts of alienation I was having, more so than the other three kids who eventually arrived. There were two other girls there for drugs (mostly auxiliary characters for the purposes of this story) and this tall, preppy boy who walked in wearing a scarf and a rich kid coat. I think we thought he stuck out from the group, but then when we were introducing ourselves and explaining what we were doing there, it turned out he was pretty fucked up. He fancied himself a proud Italian who disliked Black people and who was able to manipulate and steal from neighborhood drug dealers. He told of an incident where he was riding in a car with a friend, and he threw the emergency brake from the passenger seat while they were going 65 miles per hour just for shits and giggles. There was more I’m sure, but that gives you an idea of what’s to come.

In addition to just talking with each other, we would do things like paint, make plaster masks out of our faces, play games, ya know, all stuff so we could be analyzed. I remember one day they asked us to draw a picture that we felt represented how we were feeling, and I drew a pile of shit with hypodermic needles sticking out of it. We were asked to bring in specific songs that we felt reflected who we were, and the group would draw along while listening. I brought in “Shitlist” by L7, and I recall the alterna-girl writing out the names of other girls she considered her enemy. She brought in “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine,” and the preppy said he related to the “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” refrain in the song. Me and the other alterna-girl were all about doing the wacky fun things, whereas the boy was a little proud. He wasn’t an unfriendly person either, but you could tell there was something seriously off.

We did all the things you’d expect bad kids to do, including one incident where we shared a cigarette inside the meeting room when the young female instructor/guard stepped out. (In my mind, I remember her as looking like a shorter Kelly Kapowski with glasses?) She was understandably pissed and demanded answers when she came back to the smell in the room, and I admit I turned a little chickenshit by doing that thing where I spoke first like “Ok, I’LL take the blame for ALL of us!,” because I knew that’d be a misdirection, and alterna-girl laughed at my cowardice. In the end we all shared blame, but thankfully it didn’t get back to my parents. I remember this incident where I went to the restroom and there was shit smeared all over the walls and sink. I don’t think we knew who did it, but I told Ms. Kapowski about it, and when she went to look she simply remarked out loud, “That’s pathological.”

There was this guy in his 30’s who was also an instructor/guard there, and we got along quite well. I think he saw me as a younger version of himself (except that he said that he’d “done every drug that you can think of”). He sort of looked out for me, and I remember one day when he wasn’t there this other instructor guy insisted I take a piss test, even though I wasn’t there for drugs. I would have protested, but fortunately for him I enjoyed peeing in weird places. (And I swear, I have this faint recollection of peeing on the floor of a meeting room in one of these types of offices around this time, but that could just be an amalgam of some inaccurate memories).

The whole experience lasted only two weeks, though I sometimes question that, because it seemed an eternity. One afternoon all us kids were hanging around and goofing off in a stairwell of the building, and the preppy boy decided to take a fire extinguisher off the wall and shoot off some of the powder. We then walked to another stairwell where I grabbed a different fire extinguisher and tried to fire it, but thankfully (as it turned out) I didn’t know enough to remove the pin, so I just put it back.  The boy then grabbed it, removed the pin, and shot the hell out of the thing all over the stairwell.  We then went back to the other stairwell, where he emptied the first one we were messing with, then unceremoniously (but accidentally) dropped the canister down the stairs, nearly missing two of the girls. The thing about fire extinguishers, if you didn’t know, is that once you fire that shit in the air, it STAYS in the air. The stairwells were completely filled with yellow dust and nitrogen and who knows what else type of compressed chemicals. We left things as they were and went back to the unmonitored meeting room, where the boy proceeded to grab the fire extinguisher in there and fire off just a little bit of the contents, which turned out to be his undoing.

The 30-something drug instructor guy eventually came into the room, and asked what was in the air that was burning his eyes. We all waffled a bit, and the boy offered the explanation that he burned a pop (“soda” for you non midwesterners) can inside of the room, and that’s what was causing the noxious smell. The instructor angrily informed the boy he was going to call his father about the incident, and they both temporarily left the room. Alterna-girl turned to me and excitedly asked, “Should we tell (the instructor) about the fire extinguishers?!,” and even though this was a narc move, we all kind of hated him and maybe wanted to see it go down. I didn’t rat on him, but she was more than happy to, and I followed them both out to the stairwell, where after viewing an impenetrable ocean of yellow dust, the instructor had a look on his face that I can only describe as murderous. It didn’t even occur to me that a crime had been committed, but the building sure as shit called the police. When the cops arrived I was sitting in a chair next to the preppy boy, and according to the instructor the cop pointed at me first and said, “He did it?” After a brief discussion with all of us in the meeting room, the cops arrested the boy and cuffed him.  “Ever been handcuffed before?” the cop asked him. “Yeah,” the boy replied. “Do ya like it?!” the cop fired back. The boy shrugged, and was led away.

Alterna-girl had a boyfriend that she would talk about often, and would talk openly about how they’d have unprotected sex, much to the chagrin of the instructors. One day she was talking about how well-endowed he was, and how the previous night she “came 5 or 6 times” during intercourse. Her tales put the instructors on edge, and one day she let it slip that she missed her period. She took a home pregnancy test, which came out positive. She confided in the Kelly Kapowski instructor, who after some consideration, let her mom know. This set alterna-girl into an all out frenzy, yelling “I thought you were my friend!,” and calling some older woman there “A fucking bitch” for reasons I can’t remember (possibly because she talked Kelly into ratting her out). She ran screaming and crying out of the building, and I think that was the last I saw of her until we all reunited at the office later on with our parents for a debriefing of sorts.

The final meeting/debriefing was weird, all of us there with our very different parents. We were all asked to share with our parents how we were feeling about everything, and what they could do to help us, but I didn’t really have anything useful to say. I stammered out something about my dad relating better to me, but I honestly just needed a reset button on everything. That came a few months later in the form of my almost dying in a car accident, which wasn’t a preferable option, but I guess it was the express version. I didn’t use the names of the kids in this retelling because I don’t remember them, and I’m glad I don’t, because then I’d have the option of finding out what happened to them, and I’m sure it wasn’t good. But it turns out alterna-girl wasn’t pregnant after all. 

This one is for all the troubled teens, 

Salut.

Available for free download from Bandcamp!

1.  Rewind 

2. You're in the Show 

3. Mr. Ha Ha 

4. Miami Would Have Been Nice 

5. Blood Turkey 

6. He Made It 

7. Kelly's Lament 

8. I Signed 

9. Back Up

10. Pass Gas in the Name of Kevin Costner 

11. Rain Man

12. Cocktails and Dreams 

13. Tom Cruise is the Most Important Celebrity 

14. Every Episode 

I often think of a specific instance from one of my little league baseball games, where this annoying boy on my team named Mark who everyone hated was up to bat in the final inning with the bases loaded. The game was tied 7-7, and he got hit in the back by a pitch, which forced in the winning run. He started tearing up, and I don’t think he realized he won the game for us by getting smacked by the ball.

His mom came to pick him up on a motorcycle, and I watched him ride away on the back of the bike, smirking while wearing sunglasses and eating sour cream and onion potato chips. He had a look on his face that was like “Let’s party dudes!,” as they sped away.