lost time

back in the day burger king used to sell watches that were tied into movie promotions. at the time i was really into watches, so i picked one up almost every time they offered them. this particular one was for the movie 'jurassic park: the lost world'. the 'special feature' of this watch was that the face was filled with water and had dino bones floating around in it. wow, quite special! about as lame as the movie itself... i dont think i ever wore it, but i did display it in my room with the rest of my watch collection.

mickey watches

my dad has always loved watches. slowly but surely i grew to enjoy them as well, but i had to be convinced of their coolness. what finally convinced me? mickey mouse. for a long time i would only wear mickey watches, so i accrued quite a collection of them. these four are the only remaining ones that i have. each of them were worn for quite a while- the one on the left even played 'its a small world after all'!
i guess my fascination didnt last very long, because i havent worn a watch, even a mickey one, in about 8 years...

boldly go

now, i must admit something: i was a trekkie. when i was growing up i really loved star trek. my dad enjoyed it, so he would watch it every once in a while, and my friend adam and i were really into it. we actually attended a star trek convention. actually, two of them.
one year my parents surprised me with this watch, they had gotten it out of a catalog, special order! it kept the time, and the seconds were counted out by an enterprise flying around the face of the watch! oh, and the best part: it had a button you could press and it would play the original star trek tv theme! i wore it often.
sorry to break hearts ladies, but i am off the market...

roger, roger.

another thing i collected for a while was watches. this particular one a couple friends and i spotted at the mall and thought it was terribly stupid. its from star wars: the phantom menace, and its the head of a droid. you push a little button at the bottom and the droid head pops up to reveal the time. there were a couple other ones as well, all of them equally retarded. we saw them and laughed about how dumb they were. then we saw that they were price reduced and we laughed again- 'they're so lame, no one would buy them!' we had such fun mocking them that we realized that we would, in fact, have to buy them! they were only like a buck fifty, so we each got them and wore them for the rest of the day, laughing hysterically every time we would ask each other what time it was.

fire and ice commerical

back in college a buddy of mine, joe, and i organized a music festival. strange, i know, but we were involved in the campus radio club, and that lead us to get involved with some strange things... well, we had originally created it to be an event to just get a couple campus bands to play, but it kind of snowballed into a full-out 12 hour festival which included a dozen bands, some of which were on a national tour and stopped by Dordt to perform. our festival was called 'fire and ice', and among the bands that performed were endorphine, the normals (with lead singer andrew osenga), silage, rich young ruler, eric champion, and many more.
at the local radio station they were willing to play a commercial we cut for the music festival. this strange looking thing is an old school loop cartridge. you could pop this thing into the machine and it would run its 30 second spot, and it wouldnt have to be rewound for the next play.

audio a

this is a little cardboard cutout of the band audio adrenaline. back in high school i was really in to this band. actually, this was the band that first got me interested in music! up until this point i mostly just listened to what my parents listened to, not really having much interest in finding bands of my own. at the time my parents listened to country music and i would blindly listen to whatever they had on. the only thing i liked on my own was disney animated soundtracks.
a couple of the guys had gone to see audio adrenaline in concert and came back with one of their cds. they were over at my house and popped it in and i instantly fell in love! it was back when their first cd was out and i loved the fact that they had a couple silly songs like 'dc10'. soon after i convinced my mom to buy me the cd, and i followed them for the following 10 years. i got this foot tall cardboard cut-out at one of their concerts. my friends and i went to go see them as often as possible- i think we ended up seeing them six or seven times!
as their sound changed so did i. they went from silly pop to rock to folk, then back to rock. i stuck with them for most of it, but after underdog i lost interest. they were a band that changed its sound ever album, depending on what was popular. after underdog my tastes in music began to branch away from the popular and so we amicably parted ways. since then they have broken up, but i still look back on those concerts and albums and remember how much they impacted my taste in music and impacted me and my friends. good times...

key chain collection

i am a collector at heart. i have many collections, among them is my collection of key chains. the fun of key chains is that each of them has a story. below i have taken this opportunity to remember each of their stories and share them. all the key chain posts can be found here.

gettysburg

growing up i always had a keen interest in the civil war. it may have stemmed from the ken burns documentary that was always playing on pbs whenever they did fundraising. every time it was on my dad and i were glued to the screen. over the years my dad and i always talked about going to gettysburg and checking it out, but we soon forgot about it until pbs reminded us each winter.
finally, one summer while i was in college, we did it- we took a four day trip to go see the wonder that is gettysburg! this key chain was purchased at one of the souvenir shops in town. while there we walked the field, took the sightseeing tour, walked cemetery and seminary ridges, scaled little round top, and took it all that there was to see! we were in heaven!!! when we got back from the trip we immediately rewatched the movie gettysburg (which was filmed at the actual battlefield) and kept saying 'oh, we were there!'. i still look back at that trip and remember it as one of the funnest times ive ever had with my dad!

wakko

this is a key chain of wakko, one of the characters from animaniacs. i used this key chain for many years, until the chain part finally broke off! animaniacs was my absolute favorite show when i was growing up- i would watch it every single day when i got home from school. the guys and i would spend countless hours talking about it and trying to reinact some of the best parts. there are actually a couple bits that i committed to memory and can still recite word for word to this day. 'hoyle! how'd you, with the going...'

film

another key chain from our trip to clearwater, florida. this one is shaped like a roll of film (film, children, is what we used to use before there was such a thing as digital cameras. strange, huh?) you could pull out the 'film' from the roll and it was filled with photos of nifty touristy stuff from around that area, you know, buildings and bridges and stuff.

bang!

oh, this one was totally rad! i dont remember where i got this one, but i remember playing with it a lot! its only about two inches long, but the trigger and hammer actually work. i remember going over to my cousin jeff's house, he had one too, and we would go and get caps to put into the gun. what worked best though, were those red rolls that would have little paper bubbles of gun powder. we would tear them off and put them under the hammer and scare people with them all the time! i think my aunt or my mom took them away from us at one point, but we found them and got them back so as to cause more mayhem another day!

eagle rock

this key chain i got during our family vacation up to the upper peninsula. i must have really dug eagles at the time.

2001

i dont quite remember where i got this key chain from, but it is a graduation key chain that features a cross and the year that i graduated from dordt college. ah 2001, truly a space odyssey...

peachy

another key chain i got on the way down to florida. i guess i was just starting out my collection and figured i'd get a key chain from every state i went through. i think i got this one because i thought the southern accent i would hear from gas station workers and waitresses was hilarious, or strange. i have since become much more open minded and understanding, now i realize its hilarious and strange.

spruce goose

one of the class trips i went on with students while i taught in salt lake city was to the island of catalina in california. it was a great time, we stayed on the island in a learning center campground. we went boating and snorkeling and learned all about different marine biology.
the place where we got on a boat to get to the island is right where the queen mary boat is docked, and the hanger that used to house the infamous spruce goose! the huge wooden plane is gone, but they still have key chains...

license place

i think i got this one to show my michigan pride, and so i didnt forget my name...

country singers

when i was growing up my parents listened to country, i was all about it as well. we even went to a couple country concerts. my uncle, cousin, dad and i even went to go see alan jackson at the palace in auburn hills. it was a great time. thats where i got the key chain. the other key chain is of john barry, who i never saw in concert. im guessing my parents or sister did and got that one for me. i dont really listen to country music anymore, but i will say that john barry's rendition of 'oh holy night' is still the very best version i have ever heard.

old kent

when i got my first car this was the chain that was on the keys. in case you dont know, old kent was a bank chain that used to exist in grand rapids. i know its just a bank, but for some reason i have a sentimental fondness for it. growing up its where my parents would bank. i have many memories of going over to that bank with my mom, she depositing checks, or going through the drive-thru and getting a sucker. and memories of counting coins with my dad on the counter and rolling them up. he and i would then drive over to the bank in his rusted out green truck (which always smelled of leather work gloves), and bringing in fistfulls of rolled change. ahh, im wistful just thinking about it... darn you fifth third for buying them out and relegating my beautiful memories of youth to the past!

world cup

here is another gift from my korean students from when i taught in salt lake city. all of them were really in to soccer, especially because the world cup was in korea and japan that year! one of my students, juno, actually flew back home for a weekend because his dad had tickets to one of the games. he brought back this key chain for me.

penny

good thing i got me this lucky penny from tennessee- its come in handy so many times... or something.

nibble bob

my favorite class in high school had to be speech class. most people hated it, but i totally loved it! one of our speech assignments was to sell a product. i usually went above and beyond with my speeches, and this one was no different. i figured i would create my own products to sell rather then come up with a pitch for an existing line. i had created the character nibble bob a year or two before, so i made a whole line of products based on him! i spent many hours taking pictures from the internet of famous celebrities and altering their clothing to incorporate the face of nibble bob. i also made a couple products to show- i made took one of my baseball caps and painted nibble bob onto it, i made a bandanna with his face on it, i created a video case for a nibble bob movie, and accompanying cd soundtrack. i also created this key chain with nibble bob's likeness on it.
i think we were allotted three to five minutes for our presentation, and mine took about 15... dont worry, i already know i'm a total nerd.

jars of clay

when the band jars of clay first came out i was really in to them (to be honest, i'm still really in to them...). at one point when i was still in high school they came to play at calvin college, and a bunch of friends and i went to see them. we had a great time, and they were awesome! i still remember the opening band as well, the samples, because they were so terrible! one of the things that was so fun about the jars of clay concert was that they had a violin player during the show, and he played an electric violin made of glass with a neon light in it! i've since gone to see them a couple more times, and they just keep getting better and better.

spawn

i cant remember where exactly i got this one from, but it is a key chain of a skull from the 'spawn' comic book. i was really obsessed with that comic for a few years, and would buy anything spawn related that i came across! i actually used this one on my keys for a couple years, that's why its broken and so well worn! i still think it looks really rad...

smithsonian

in my senior year of high school i was in the advance placement government class. i had already taken government class in the fall semester, but in the spring semester i could take the a.p. class and get college credit and skip a political science class- sounds good to me! and another bonus with taking this class: a trip to washington d.c. about 12 kids from my high school went on the program called 'close-up'. it was a great time, we spent five days checking out washington d.c. and going to all the cool places there. one of the places we went was the smithsonian institute. they had a really cool exhibit on flight, and a fun 'star wars' one where they had a ton of the actual costumes from the good trilogy.

clearwater

on one of our trips to florida i picked up these two keychains. i remember hanging out in the touristy area in clearwater. i was probably 11, and my mom and dad were ready to go back to the hotel, but i wanted to wander around a bit longer. i told them i would find my way back by myself and they, for some reason, trusted me on my own. the town had a busing system and i figured i could find my way back, i knew what bus stop i needed to get off on, so i thought i would be fine. after about an hour and a half on the bus, it still hadnt come to the stop i remembered... finally, after two hours on the bus, it pulled up in front of the hotel, and boy were my parents mad! they were so worried about me! i hadnt given it a second thought, i knew i would eventually make it to the right place, and i got a nice long scenic trip out of the deal too!

lighthouse

another key chain from our family trip to the upper peninsula. this one is from a lighthouse we visited in leland, michigan. we didnt actually get to go up in it because it was closed, but it was a really beautiful area and worth the visit anyway.

sledge-o-matic

my dad always loved gallagher. he is a comedian who was really popular in the 80's and was best known for his 'sledge-o-matic', a giant sledge hammer what he would use to squash watermelons and other things.
i remember watching a bunch of his comedy specials on comedy central and liking them. he was mostly known for doing humor about the difference between the sexes, poking fun at the english language (an example: 'why do we call them buildings when they are already built?').
once he was touring around our town, so my mom and dad went to go see him. i dont remember if they were in the splash zone (squashing watermelons tends to be a bit messy...), but they had a great time. they came back with this key chain for me, a small version of the 'sledge-o-matic'.

michigan deer

not quite sure when i got this one, but i think it accurately portrays my love for both hunting and outdoor activities.



please note the distinct sarcasm of that last sentence.

busch gardens ride

another key chain from our visit to busch gardens in florida. ive run out of fun memories from this trip. oh wait! i just thought of one! i doesnt have anything to do with the key chain, but i remember there being a cool ride that i really liked. it was one of those rides that you are put into a room with a moving floor and it tilts and turns along with the video on the screen so it feels like your flying around. i dont remember what the theme for this ride was, but it was the first ride like it that i had ever been on and i just totally loved it! i think my dad needed to sit down for a while after we got done...

pop mart

back in high school my friend sean got tickets to go see u2 in chicago. one of his brothers wasnt able to go, so he offered it to me! it was during their 'pop mart' tour in support of their 'pop' album, which to this day i still consider their best (i know, i am in a very small minority on this one...) i asked my mom and dad if i could go and was told no. can you imagine?!? i had the chance to see u2 live, and i couldnt go! oh, cruel world! i would rank this as one of the biggest missed opportunities of my life!
sean found somebody else to go, but felt so bad for me that he brought back this key chain for me. every time i see this key chain it taunts me with what might have been...

cypress gardens

another keychain from florida. i must have run my parents wallet dry with these things! i guess i got this one so i would remember my name... those synchronized water skiers sure are amazing looking, huh?

nashville cutter

another purchase from one of our trips to florida. i got this one in nashville. its a pouch with a few random knives and a nail cutter. the nail cutter wasnt in the pouch because i think this is the one that i still use all the time to cut my nails...

cedar point

one vacation my family would often go on was a trip down to cedar point. this was always a blast, we would go with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins. we would often go there at the beginning of the spring, the first weekend they were open. it meant that it was a bit chillier than later in the summer, but it also meant that an average wait for a coaster was about five minutes. certainly a fair trade off! usually it was a day trip where we would get up really early and head down there, and drive back that night after the park had closed. cedar point is amazingly fun, it is just jam packed with roller coasters and fun theme lands. one of the roller coasters is the 'blue streak', which is this super old wooden coaster that looks like it could fall apart at any moment. its kind of a wussy ride with quite small hills. because it doesnt really stack up at all versus the newer coasters, it was always imperative that we go on that one first- if we went later it would seem lame in comparison, so out of respect, we would hit that one first! they had a ton of amazing rides, on this particular trip the newest coaster was called 'the raptor', it is one of those where your feet get to dangle below you. and it is amazing!!! my cousin jeff and i went on it as much as we could. the best time we went on it was at the end of the night, the sun was setting and the sky was filled with beautiful pinks and purples, and we had finally scored the front seats. we were terrified, but thats what made it so great!

face it

i grew up in the calvinist christian reformed church tradition. this particular denomination has a youth convention each year as a place to get together and get to know other crc kids from around the country, get away from home for a week, go to seminars about interesting God stuff, and just generally reenergize a passion for christ. my brother and sister went on to it once or twice, so when i was old enough i was really pumped to go too. by the time i was in high school we no longer attended a crc church, but i was still able to go through my friend nathans youth group.
i went twice: once to the event in san diago, and once to the convention when it was in indiana. a bunch of buddies would always go too, and we had a blast each year! there were fun classes and worship meetings. in general, it was just a blast to be able to be with friends nonstop for five days! this particular key chain was actually for the following year, but it reminds me of all the fun we had the years we went.

kumba

another key chain from the family visit to busch gardens in florida. this one is the animal used to represent the roller coaster called 'kumba'. we had a great time here, i remember loving all the rides and the animals they had around. if i remember correctly, though, i think my favorite attraction was the air conditioning...

mackinac bridge

on the trip we took with my family and uncle and aunt, we stopped at the mackinac bridge on our way to the upper peninsula. right next to the bridge is an old military fort that my dad and i got to tour together. it was cool to see the wooden fort walls and the cannons they used to use to keep the bypass into lake michigan safe. the bridge itself was really impressive as well.

snoopy

another key chain from the family visit to mall of america. this mall was amazing- it had six floors with tons of shops on each, it had a movie theater on the seventh floor, and it had a small amusement park right in the center of the mall! at the time the park had a 'peanuts' theme, and even had a snoopy roller coaster in doors. my dad and i even got to go on it! at one of the booths inside the park i got this cool snoopy key chain.

dont bother me

while in utah i taught at a school that had quite a few foreign students. almost all of them had come from south korea. i tried my best to make them welcome and i always enjoyed having them in class- they always had the craziest sense of humor! i must have done something right, because when ever they would return from a visit home, or when they would leave at the end of the year they would always give me stuff from korea. this is one of the gifts i received. its a key chain thats kind of strange: its got a korean symbol on it and around the symbol is says 'dont bother me'. i guessing its one of those things where they love anything that has english on it, no matter what it says... also, for some reason, there is a string with strange beads and red things that look like peppers. those crazy koreans...

los angeles

im not entirely sure how i got this one. i think its from when my dad had to go to l.a. for a business trip and he brought it home for me. ive been to l.a. before, but only this past year, so i know i didnt get it for myself. hmm...

busch gardens

another key chain from my familys visit to busch gardens. this one is one of those key chains that has a picture in it. when we first entered the park there were photographers near the entrance who worked for the park and they would ask us to take a photo, and by the time you leave the park at the end of the day they would develop it and put it in this key chain and you could buy it if you wanted. we wanted. i really have to find a way to get that picture out and scan it so i can post it too because it is so bad! we all look so funny in it! my mom is wearing a fanny pack, my sister has bangs that go a mile high, and i look like the kid from 'two and a half men'!
priceless!

olympic mascots

this is a rubber key chain of the three mascots: powder, coal, and copper, used for the 2002 salt lake city winter olympics. i have some great memories of the olympics while i was there. at the time i volunteered at a christian coffee shop that was down town. every night during the olympics were crazy! we always had a line out the door, from when we opened at 8:00am until we closed at 2:00am! walking down the streets during those two weeks was as close as ive ever seen to what new york city is like- there were thousands of people walking around and at any given time you could hear six different languages being spoken! truly a once in a lifetime experience.

oh, canada

another family vacation we went on was up to canada! i remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever, we were leaving not just our state, but our whole country! now i was an international traveler!
we went to wheels inn in ontario. it was the coolest- they had an indoor waterpark and everything! i remember my parents telling me that they had an indoor pool that you could swim in, and it was connected to an outdoor pool! this just blew my mind. 'so i can get in the pool inside and get out of the pool outside?!?' i couldnt quite wrap my brain around this one. when we got there the pool wasnt as amazing as i had built it upto in my mind, but we still had a great time!

great smoky mountains

man, i sure got a lot of these on our trips to florida, huh? im thinking thats around when i first started this collection...
this one is from the great smoky mountains of tennessee. we never actually went to the smoky mountains, but that didnt seem to stop me from getting this at a gas station.

shark and gator

another key chain from our florida trip. im not entirely sure why i picked this one up, but its a shark and an alligator chatting it up on the beach. the shark is saying 'i sure love tourists, they taste great!' the gator responds 'theyre less filling!'
hilarious, huh? didnt think so.

nashville chain

another souvenir from our florida trip. we headed through tennessee along the way, even stopping in nashville to check things out. ive been back there a couple times, and it is really a cool town! i dont remember much from this visit, but this key chain proves i was there!

wooden elephant

on our trip to florida we went to busch gardens for a day. we rode the rides and enjoyed the animals- they even had the budweiser clydesdale horses there! one of the sections of the park was dedicated to animals from africa, and its there that i saw this cute little elephant carved from wood.

kentucky duffel

a wonderful example of my poor taste in key chains...

for years my parents would promise us that we would go to florida, and finally, they made good. we headed down to go see my grandparents who had a winter place down there. on the way we went through many different states, and i tried to get a key chain from each of them. at one of the gas fill ups along they way we stopped in kentucky and i picked up this gem: a black leather duffel bag key chain with pink trim. im sorry, i have no explanation why. it just is.

tehquamenon camera

another great vacation we went on was up to the upper peninsula of michgian. the whole family went with my uncle, aunt, and my cousins jeff and kelly. we went up through traverse city and the mackinac bridge. one of the places we checked out was the tahquamenon falls, a cool state park with some really beautiful waterfalls.
i thought this was one of the coolest key chains they had, you can look through the eye hole and see photos of the falls. the photo button even works and it slides ahead to another picture. there are about 8 total photos to see in this key chain, and all of them are really beautiful.

mall of america

the summer after my sisters senior year of high school we took a special family vacation. my parents wanted to go on one last trip before she moved off to college. it was great, they wanted it to be a surprise, so they didnt tell jill anything about where we were going. the morning of the trip we all packed into the car, jill still unsuspecting of what was ahead. we started driving, and arrived at the airport- she was so confused! then we checked in to get our tickets and she saw that we were going to minneapolis- and she was still confused! thats when my mom and dad told her what was planned: we were going to the mall of america! she almost fainted she was so excited. she loved to shop- and now we were going to the biggest mall in the world! she was on cloud nine! we had an amazing time and stayed for about four days. my parents gave her an envelope full of money and told her it was hers to spend how ever she wanted. now thats a dream come true for any young girl, huh? they gave me an envelope too, so i wasnt too jealous...
we had an amazing time there! it was a great trip and such a great way to spend one last vacation together.

indy racing

when i was about 12 my dad, uncle, and cousin jeff went to the races. we went for the day to michigan international speedway and watched an indy car race. ive never been a car guy, but we had a good time there anyway. it was a summer day that was terribly hot, i remember sitting in the stands and just dripping sweat. the race itself wasnt very interesting, the cars would just zip by, and then a minute later, they would zip by again. lame. there werent even that many crashes! i remember walking around the merch tables checking out all there was to see. my dad had given me some money, and jeffs dad gave him some, so we parused all the different booths looking for just the right souveneers. for some reason this particular key chain caught my eye.
after going to this event it solidified my views of racing as a sport: it isnt one.