I'm beaming proudly at the moment for Dara. Her marathon training called for her to run 5 miles yesterday, a feat she's nearly accomplished with a lot of walking, but when she walked in the door, she announced that she'd ran the entire distance. Way to do it to it, little D!

I had a 7 miler yesterday meself, which went really well, and it took me past WB Studios. It dawns on me from time to time how strange it is to live in Los Angeles. For 3 miles, there I was, clipping along through Toluca Lake, what could seemingly be just about any American suburb, and then - bang! There's a sprawling movie studio, the infamous WB water tower, 20 foot high murals of shows airing on the Warner Brothers network...that ain't gonna happen in Orland Park. Most likely, I'd be running along and then bang! Someone yells, "Faggot!!!" at me.

Oh, and IPSB was phenomenal! If I do wind up taking massage, it will be there. The energy was so amazing, and the instructors weren't too terribly "granola-y, spiritualist, Birkenstockers" - they were actually downright hilarious.

1978 is here. Well, not here. There. back there.

I should mention Timmy Mace. He lived across the street and a few doors down from us and played the role of my best friend from age 4 until 6th grade when he moved to southern Illinois and became a meth addict (I'm assuming this to be true - no solid evidence).

Timmy liked KISS. A lot. I remember that. Often times we could be found running up and down the block with bath towels safety pinned around our neck, gloves over our little hands, and galoshes on our feet playing Batman and Robin. I was always relegated to assume the Batman character as I believe Timmy thought Robin was the cooler of the duo (he was - read about Burt Ward's huge schlong in his autobiography).

Jenny Rudnick, one of the 2,154 Rudnick children, lived across the street and would often join in on playing freeze-tag with us, as did Mary Caulfield (my mom says once that I said to Mary while we played house, "I'm going to work" and shoved my hands in my pockets, to which Mary - playing the dutiful housewife - responded, "I'm going shopping.") and Jennifer Peters. It was a fun gang, and there was never a lack for something to do 'round those parts. Summers ruled.

Mrs. Schmidle was my 3rd grade teacher at Kennedy. I remember once reading my textbook and realizing how an eclipse worked and exclaiming, "Neat!" aloud. Mrs. Schmidle made me write my name on the board and stay after class, which tore this people-pleaser to pieces. That'll teach me for discovering something on my own.

We watched the Striptease with special sarcastic commentary last night and laughed our asses off. I highlyhighly recommend it for more than a few chuckles. Of course, we burned the midnight oil which, for us, is the hour before midnight oil and today I'm dragging. Had a great 4 miler this morning which has put a little pep in my step. My heart rate is lower and my pace is faster, so the speed training is kicking ass!

Tonight I head to the I.P.S.B. open house - it's a massage school in Culver City that I'm thinking of attending during the summer. I just need a change, I need to learn something. Jesus, it's been forever since I learned anything applicable outside of an edit bay, and that, amigos, is teh sad. Anyhoward....

1977

Big year at the McGarry house. I remember either looking out the front door or the front window one night the summer of the prior year and wishing on a star for a brother or sister. Lo and behold, March 27th of '77, we all met Renee Alana McGarry for the 1st time. The morning of her birth, my grandmother (yep, there she is again) was babysitting me while my mom was in labor, and she woke me up by saying, "It's a girl!". Naturally, I was half-asleep and had no idea what she was talking about, but as it slowly sunk in, I got all excited and shiat. I mean, finally: Someone to punch!

My Dad and I picked them up at night, I think, from the hospital, and my Mom says that I leaned over the front seat the entire car ride staring at her. A few nights in her new home, I decided it was time for me to pick her up, so I snatched her from her crib in the living room and held her for the first time. My Mom walked in - keep in mind I'm not quite 7 years old yet - and calmly said, "Oh! Look at you!". She then convinced me that maybe we could "both hold her".

Most of this year revolved around my baby sis, which was cool, because I had a new obsession that kept me far away from any human contact. It begins like this:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

I just about crapped myself when my Dad and I saw Star Wars for the first time, and I say the "first time' because I dragged them both to see it three times before the refusals started pouring in. I mean, HAN SOLO WAS SO GODDAMNED COOL, and PRINCESS LEIA WAS SO FUCKING PRETTY, and DARTH VADER WAS SO FUCKING EVIL, and C3PO WAS SO GOD DAMNED GAY. My Grandfather had special ordered action figures for me that I'd received prior to the movie's release: Luke, Han, a storm trooper, Darth Vader, Chewie, Obi Wan, 3PO, and R2D2. I had no idea who any of these characters were, but the buildup was so intense and ingenius of Lucas....

Sorry. I'm getting emotional. I think I'll head to starwars.com...

The year was our country's bi-centennial and everything was decorated in red, white, and blue: Clothing, furniture, your mom.

Keeding.

1976

The year I began first grade with Mrs. Winter, I could be seen trolling between Cermak Rd. and 31st Street on a mostly plastic, bright orange, banana-seated bike (don't worry: Everyone else had cool, black dirt bikes. The trend continues...), and my first trip overseas happened.

For 4 weeks, I was carted around Italy by my grandmother. Remember how I described her? Yep, tons of fun. My mom tells me that she jokingly asked me if I wanted to go to Italy with my granny and that without hesitation, I said yes. Every day that the trip loomed closer, she awaited my freakout, my "what have I done?!" moment, but it never came. Aaaaallllll the way to the airport, she expected me to breakdown and lose my shiat...nope.

I remember the plane being crowded and - get this - smoky. Ah, the good ol' days. It was a long ass flight too, I think around 12 hours with a stopover in Ireland where we wandered the Dublin airport's gift shoppes.

I remember bits and pieces of the trip: Firstly, no one spoke ANY English whatsoever. I must have met 200 relatives, and not one of them could talk to me. My family comes from a region of Italy called Abruzzi, a tiny town called Royo, nestled up high in the mountain ranges of central Italy. I met some relative who'd had his hand blown off by a hand grenade (irony?), one of my nun relatives who made origamy (scaring the living crap out of me. I mean, picture a 75 year old nun in full habit handing you a stork made from paper.), and pretty much the rest of the village. This too is where I dropped about 10 pounds because I drank goat's milk and continuously had the runs for a few days.

We travelled all over and made a stop in Rome. Some details I remember:

Sitting on a donkey up in the mountains (there's a large photo of that)
Snails crawling up the walls inside when it rained
Playing in the dirt streets with the local kids
Seeing my 2nd cousin, Carmello, naked and being obsessed by the fact that he was uncircumcised (a "What the FUCK?!" moment)
Being inside the coluseum
Coloring in my Wizard of Oz coloring book on a patio in the sun
My young-ish cousin-ish female relative's hairy armpits (another "what the FUCK!?" moment)
Popeye dubbed in Italian
My cousin Pasqualino looking like a hippie (he was)

All in all, I think I had fun. I don't remember ever feeling homesick, which upon further examination, is another through-line in my life.

Damn, job calls. Byeeeee....

"Kindergarten". Where in theee hell did that word come from? I'd better not dwell for too long on the subject, because we're steamrolling straight into...

1975.

This is, of course, the year I entered kindergarten, thus kickstarting my 6 year student career at Kennedy School, which was about 1/2 a block from my house. I think that I remember my first day, although it could be any old, random day, but I was wearing my hooded Cookie Monster sweatshirt. Yeah, I was hardcore, even back then.

Inside the doors off the playground was the coatroom containing one of those old sinks that I seem to remember being littered in locker rooms everywhere: They're round, about 3 feet in diameter, and you step on a pedal to get the water to spurt out of a column in the center. Once you made it past that dinosaur, you found yourself in Ms. Carson's classroom. She was damn sweet, I must say.

Most of my days were spent coloring and watching filmstrips - oh, and naptime. God, I'd kill for naptime now. Everyone was required to bring their own mat, so 99% of the kids had those vinyl gym mats, the red and blue ones, but Rusty? Whoooooa no. No no no no. My mom gave me foam carpet padding, seafoam green if I'm remembering correctly, and I imagine I am because it sucked SO BAD to not fit in (watch this theme continue and escalate throughout my life).

Besides these harsh, trying daily events, there was also "play time" (WTF?!) once you finished your projects. You had two choices: Either work with cardboard building blocks or play in the life sized dollhouse in the corner. Jimmy Contechesi, once rumored to be the son of a mafia member, would scribble into his coloring book furiously, chanting, "Gotta get that dollhouse, dollhouse!" Actually, it was a fairly catchy rhythm. The kid had talent.

I liked school okay, I mean, it was a 7 minute walk from home and lasted half of a day. And did I mention nap time?

Free at last, free at last, Lord Almighty, free at last.

Friday, the supervising producer came in with what he considered "bad news". It seems that we have 2 weeks left on the show.

I'm still waiting on that "bad news".

(shackles drop, rainbow appears, butterfly lands on finger).

I'll have to find more work, but WHO THE FARK CARES!??!?!?!? Seriously, if you've read anything about how I've felt about this job, then you too are feeling as though a spike has been removed from your taint and 100 Dita Von Teeses are massaging it back to health.

Mmmmm. Dita Von Teese.

But I digress:

1974

I believe this is the year Dad started at Plywood Minnesota (catchy name, ehn?), a carpet/furnishing warehouse near Chicago's south side. I recall him showing me an ad on the back of the local TV Guide for his place of employment and pointing out the small dot that was him in the background. This also would be the year where he got a DUI and Mom and I had to drive him to work and pick him up every day. Woopsie. It actually worked out great for me, because I'd crawl and climb all over the industrial-sized rolls of carpeting and hide all over the warehouse. Not so much fun for him or mom, I imagine, although, hey, I'm 4, whaddya want from me, sympathy?

The warehouse was located not too far from my Mom's mother's place, so we'd often get suckered into going there. Allow me to illustrate the life of Emily Cavorso: 4'7", born in Italy, worked at Sears for some ridiculous amount of time, retired, and at the age of 90, moved to Vegas. Oh, and she's terminally unhappy and paranoid, so visiting her is/was always a treat. She lived in this huge bungalow on the south side and was classic Italian granny: Plastic runner through the living room so as to not mat down the carpet, plastic on every stick of furniture in the joint, and food food food being jammed in your face every 19 seconds. I used to stay the night once in awhile and be forced to wake up before God even hit the snooze button, walk with her to the church up the street, and sit through a Catholic mass, then get the added bonus of watching her clean the candle area. And people wonder why I'm anti-social.

The story goes like this:

DAD: We're either getting a new car or a dog.

ME: Dog!

MOM: Dog!

DAD: Car!

One day later, a black and white puppy named Pepper lived with us. We picked her up at a house, I remember that, and there was a playpen with 3 or 4 puppies in it. She was really playful and I immediately fell for her, so there was no hemming and hawing about it. Throughout the years, she kept me entertained, and oftentimes, she'd sneak out and run away, so we'd have to hunt for her. Honestly, I loved that dog a lot. She got cancer at the age of 11 and we had to put her down, but I can still remember her bark and the sound of her tags clicking together when she'd come running to lick my face.

(sniff)

Hey faggots...

Joking. You're so sensitive.

You know that stuff, vodka? Man, it tastes good. Consider this a PSA.

The "head production assistant" here at Dakota is named Audrey. She's 19, has a massive rack, and is about as smart as a sheep's asshole. A retarded sheep's asshole. That was addicted to opium. Anyhoward, she just ducked into the story editor's room to ask me for a pen as she was on the phone with someone trying to reach the owner of Dakota (Troy...perhaps I've mentioned him. Moron.). The phone is located around the corner in the kitchen and is "old school', i.e., non-cordless, as to say with chord, as it were. It was stretched to the limit as she was writing down the message with aforementioned pen and proceeded to shoot from her hand and across the hallway. Pretty funny.

Doesn't change the huge rack thing.

1973...the U.S. and Vietnam sign a peace agreement, Roe Vs. Wade goes into the law books, and as for me? Kickin' ass and takin' names, although I couldn't write them down as of yet because I was only 3.

We're 100% moved in now at 2230 Kensington Ave, full-on. My Dad, on the phone with me the first night in the house that I myself will be paying off for 27 more years, commanded me to go in the back yard, crack open a beer, and stare at my house. He then told me to pick up a handful of dirt and say, "MY LAND. MY LAND!!!" After performing this cross-country marionette act, Pops informed me that this is what he did our first night at 2230 Kensington. I assume this was after more than just one beer.

We spent a lot of time at "Auntie Barb's" house beginning now. Barb was a friend of Mom's from teaching days, and she was 1973 personified: The hair, the makeup, the reeking of cigarette smoke and omnipresent martini glass. Good ol' Auntie Barbara. I can almost smell her now. She and my mother had a "code" for calling each other, since she lived about an hour away and this predates call-packages, so calls could sometimes reach - hang onto yer onions - $4!! they'd alternate calls, so if my Mom called Barb last time and wanted to talk, she'd call and hang up after 1 ring, thus indicating to Barb to call her back.

Yes, my Mom is completely out of her mind.

I began preschool this year as well, at St. Michael's church (a through line of boredom in my younger years). My Mom says that I cried the first day that she dropped me off and didn't want her to leave, but by the next day, I was eager as hell to get back. It might have been the juice and cookies. Who knows.

Now, it is time for a bizarre admission from this year. No, I didn't enlist in the Nazi party, nor did I shove an oboe up my nose and tap dance on a flagpole....

I had a dollie.

It was a she.

And she was black.

I can't remember her name (Sambo? Mammy?), but nearly every photo of me from this year, she's cradled in my ever-loving arms. Say it once, say it loud, my doll's black and I'm proud.

The weather today is pucking ferfect, and I'm contained in this large storage closet, erm, I mean, office, staring up at the single window placed 4 feet higher than my head. The tuna sandwich I had for lunch was tasty and is sending my brain straight down comatose lane. What better setting could a man possibly ask for when writing:

1972

Methinks this was the year of the big move, and by big, I mean 2 or so miles, from LaGrange to scenic Westchester (www.westchester-il.org). Yup, that's one impressive water tower we've got there, ain't it? My folks bought a humble two bed, one bath house just up Mannheim road from the old apartment; while Dad was out shilling carpet samples to corrupt Chicago businesses, Mom was hiking 4 miles round trip from the old place to the new with me strapped across her back so's she could make it all purdy-like. Every house in a 3 block radius was the exact, exact same layout as ours, so if you camped out that the bar and got loaded, you had one hell of a scavenger hunt when you wound up on your block.

By this time, my jet black hair had begun it's crescendo towards blondeness, although I was completely unaware of it and was far more interested in sticking my fingers into places they didn't belong and making farting noises with my mouth (and ass, I suppose). Each Sunday morning, my Mom would drag me and my Dad to St. Michael's Church, located on 31st Street, just next door to the 31 Flavors, and while I dozed the sleep of saints, they sat and listened to some dude in a robe talk about something or another.

This would end, though, a few years later, as my father wisely came to the conclusion that "church sux" and would sleep in to worship at the altar of Moe, Larry, and Curly each Sunday morn. Meanwhile, our young hero sat in those horribly uncomfortable pews and attended Sunday school with those horribly uncomfortable people religiously (haHA!), donning only the itchiest of pants and the widest of collars.

Still broke, we didn't have a color tv, and 3 years later, in 1975 when we managed to land a beaut of a Zenith, I proudly announced to the neighborhood kids that my family had slid headfirst into the mid-1960's. I watched a ton of Sesame Street, Electric Company, and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood through the crackly static of the B and W set, which was nestled cozily in the jungle-themed dining room of my Mom's concocting.

All in all, my 1st and 2nd years were fairly uneventful, as is the case for many who cannot drive, vote, or leave the house without someone holding their hand.

Okay, so we're on to 1971, my official first year on planet Earth as a human baby, the same year A Clockwork Orange was released, American women were burning their bras, and Richard Nixon had U.S. citizens buggered over a barrel.

As for me? Still crapping myself.

Somewhere within this year, my mom's father, Antonio, died. She always tells me he hung on so that he could meet me and then went to that big, grandparent's left lane with turn signal blinking highway in the sky. From what I've heard also, he was a pretty incredible individdle: Moved here from Italy with a mere 3rd grade education and worked in the coal mines, organised the union for International Harvester, was fluent in his native Italian, English, and French, and had a booming baritone singing voice like Caruso. Nifty.

We were still hanging at the LaGrange apartments. My mom has a photo of her and me in a swimming pool there, and by the looks of it, it was the summer of '71 when I peed in that pool for the 1st time. My Pop was selling carpeting door-to-door to businesses, fullfilling his lifelong dream, and Mom had stopped teaching to rear me. Needless to say, broke, broke, broke, but I guess they managed to feed and clothe me, although I do have a penchant for wearing burlap bags and eating old coffee grounds for some, suspicious reason.

I walked for the first time in December of this year, I want to say on or just before Christmas day, realizing that my feet weren't just for sucking, and at my first birthday party, the hilariously and oft-repeated "Rusty stuck his finger in the birthday cake when no one was looking" tale (and yes, there is photographic evidence).

Oh yeah, and my family calls me "Rusty". Always have, and all of my friends up until I was 18 recognised me by that monicker. But now I'm jumping ahead to 1988, and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, do we?

I'll spare you (and myself) the "holyshitwhenwasthelasttimeIblogged" diatribe and jump right in.

The holidays were fabu: Dara's dad came out to visit (!) and saw the west coast for the first time since he shipped out to WW2. Wild, ehn? We carted him all overthehell, wore him out pretty well, and stuck him on a jet. Then we head up to Mammoth for New Years and hung with 9 friends in 2 condos that we rented, spent FAR too much money (we dubbed it the "let's pretend we're nouveau riche" vacation), skiied, cross-country skiied, drank like guppies, somehow acquired controlled substances, consumed them, and came back on the 2nd.

Good times. Great oldies.

Ever notice how those 2 absolutely must go together?

So I'm steering the blog here in a different direction, taking a cue from a psuedo-acquaintance Shane Nickerson . He traced his life from year to year from the day he was born, a year a post. So here we go...

1970 - This year I don't remember much from. I know that Jimi Hendrix died on the day I was born, but I have an alibi. Anyoldway, on Sept. 18th, Ruth and Robert McGarry popped out a kid in Melrose Park, Illinois and - for some reason- named him Russell Anthony McGarry ( I share a birthday with Lance Armstrong, Greta Garbo, Cubs 2nd baseman Ryne Sandberg, and Robert Blake). I spent my first year living in LaGrange, Illinois, about 20 miles west of the city of Chicago, in a 2 bedroom apartment. I imagine I spent most of my time crapping myself and spitting up on my parents, but I dunno. For my first Christmas, all I probably wanted was to be changed out of shiatty diapers and spit up on my parents.

I met my insane family this year for the first time: Emilia and Antonio, my mom's folks, Betty and Bob, my dad's, and Uncle Tony, his wife Pat, twin aunts Barb and Bridget, Aunt Beth, and special guest Jamie Farr.

I keed.

All in all, I'm thinking was a pretty good year for me. Lots of sleep, people "goo-gooing" me all the time, and did I mention shiatting myself? Good.