THE DOMESTICATED BACHELOR

$15 Million Ultimate Bachelor Pad

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Posted in apartment, art, bachelor pad, books, cooking, culture, decorating, games, garden, health, house, List, movies, music, sports, tech, tools, travel, tv, video, world of warcraft |

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Ode To Autumn

October 4, 2009 |

Author admin

by Jonathan Bogman Perry

I think leaf-peeping sounds like it should be a punishable offense. It would be cool to do, but it just sounds dirty. Anyway, it’s autumn and time to start taking care of the fallen leaves and wrap up the yard work. For about a decade after college I lived in a duplex apartment that was pretty unfit for humanity. There were advantages, though, one of which was the great non-problem of yard work. I didn’t have to do it. It’s one of those odd benefits of apartment living. I actually lived in a basement duplex, so there was a yard on the property and, from time to time, such as when I was dissatisfied with the state of the acreage, I took matters into my own hands and cleaned up my area by trimming back some bushes that had taken to regularly whacking me or removed a discarded refrigerator which has somehow blown into the yard. Yard work wasn’t required of me by the lease, nor, apparently, was it required of anyone.

The thing is, I do actually enjoy yard work and have fond memories of doing it in ages past. I find it even more satisfying now to do at my own place. I affectionately remember during my youth going kicking and screaming to mow the lawn at the threatening behest of my folks, whom, I should add, I love dearly, but might have been evicted by the neighborhood association had it not been for my infrequent yard maintenance. During my near decade of college I would come home once every few months to find that the jungle in my parents’ backyard had managed to swallow most of the yard tools and several large and endangered mammals. Of course, I wasn’t the only one to do the yard work. I do have 2 younger brothers, but either one brother managed conveniently to be overseas in Europe for the school year, or the youngest had a debilitating broken toe which prevented any physical activity besides walking 2 miles to school each way or dancing in the school musical (I really wanted to say ’run on the track team’, but that’s just not so).

I enjoy raking leaves during the crisp autumn afternoons, building great piles of arboreal death, but I would enjoy dental surgery if it were outside in the fall. Autumn is always thrilling with the fantastic foliage colors of red, orange, brown, and yellow and the nip in the air that promises a brisk winter right around the corner. These are the days of the holidays and refreshingly happy vacations. It’s when sports get fun again. I’m sure I would very much enjoy New England in the fall. It’s a fantasyland that I have yet to experience. Perhaps one day when I finally grow up and become a man I’ll move out to New England just so I can be there in the autumn to happily rake up the mountains of fallen leaves that have swallowed the yard and a lost California Condor or two. I’d probably just leave them there. They’re so pretty. The leaves, too.

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Posted in Adult, apartment, bachelor pad, family, garden, holidays, house |

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How NOT To Decorate The Bachelor Pad

June 5, 2009 |

Author admin

Art waiting to be hung

by Jonathan Bonnaroo Perry

Even though I moved into my new house about 8 months ago, I still haven’t put up most of my wall art because I’m not fully settled with the furniture placement and want to trade out some stuff, like the couches. I may not move things around for a bit, but I might put in some built-in bookcases soon and this could affect organization of wall art. Also, I was originally thinking I’d go with a slight Asian decoration theme (kind of ‘Asian meets French Country in the Suburbs’ aka ‘Bachelor Needs Designer‘), but my art is largely comprised of Egyptian papyrus paintings, so I’m a little perplexed. I don’t want to be too scattered. Fortunately, the house has much more space than the micro-apartment and I can spread out the mess so things don‘t look as junky.

(17 Types of Bachelor Pads)

In the old apartment, I maintained some essential articles of furniture so that I could, if necessary, sit down. Upon getting my own Hobbit hole after college, I brought from my dorm room a ratty old grey stuffed chair (I gutted it last year for the coins inside. It turns out the color was originally blue.). I found some more shabby items at used furniture stores and answered newspaper ads for an enormous gold couch and 1970s end tables. Since then, I’ve been upgrading, gradually dumping the crappy items for slightly less-crappy WalMart and Shopko furniture (the furniture styles in my house now average early 1990s). In the small apartment I had several full bookcases that filled up the walls, then stacked in front of and next to those were a number of boxes and clear storage containers full of decades of hoarded items I’ll never use, but can’t throw away because of the nostalgia disease I inherited from my packrat ancestors.

Early pic of old apartment. Decoration not visible

Besides the basic furniture crapfest, I decorated the old place a little. My decorating style started with a delicately balanced mix of framed art (in the living room) and tacked-up posters (in the bedroom and hallway) with some travel calendars placed here and there. It might have worked if the posters were art nouveau in frames, but my posters were maps, castles and Hindu deities tacked, taped, or puttied to the walls (deities for decoration only, not worship). There were also a couple small flags from the British Isles. I rather liked the pastiche nature of it all, but interpret psychologically that I had one foot in one world, a world of mature adults with refined tastes who have framed art, while my other foot was sucked in the mud of another world, a world of childhood, casualness, and bachelordom. As these worlds pulled me apart, I stretched into painful splits that put undue pressure on my netherlands.

The new living room has naked walls

My framed art is primarily a collection of Egyptian papyrus paintings that I had mounted at great cost as I found myself conveniently unemployed out of college. They made my apartment living room a pseudo-Egyptian shrine to Ra. I continued the Egyptian theme with that enormous gold couch (that housed guitars and a neo-Egyptian calico cat I fed), and topped it off with a good sized bust of Tut that doubles as a useful candle holder (the candle is behind the glass eyes, so the eyes of fire can be wickedly impressive). I even have two hanging Chinese art scroll-painting-things that I brought back from Taiwan which are quite excellent and filled up entire wall sections in my short-ceilinged apartment.

There are lots of other little statues and busts which helped give my place a demented old maid museumy touch. In the ‘foyer’ I had a bust of Franz Schubert (with glasses) and a bust of one of the Richard Strausses to inspire me musically. Then there’s the Beefeater bobblehead I brought back from England. The miniature Scottish knight had his sword positioned in an attack stance above the head of one of the three mini-Buddhas my brother Chris gave me for Christmas a few years ago (one has achieved cage-dancing Buddha status).

This Chinese Scroll Painting is one of few pieces up

Perched atop my bookcase, the gargoyles stared down judging my sloth and a brass-finished lion judged my weakness. I’m not sure what the Mayan Chakmul judges or even how to spell Chakmul or if it‘s really Mayan and not Aztec or Incan, but apparently it’s Mexican because my brother Jay brought it back from Mexico (I think my History degree was just voided). I also had a string of Chinese lantern lights on one bookshelf and a string of bubble lights on another bookshelf, next to which was my groovy lava lamp to remind me that hippies gave something pretty excellent, if useless, to the culture after all.

At this point, despite all my collected junk, I didn’t go overboard and collect a roomful of miniature owls or cats to keep me company during the remainder of my dementia, but this step is a short trip. I have actually known 2 older women who collected an incredible number of miniature owl figurines, which was impressive and kooky and a really strange coincidence. What are the chances of knowing 2 unrelated older women at different ends of the country who fill large areas with different sizes and makes of owls?

I think most of my nicknacks won’t make it out of storage into any normal part of the new house. They’ll probably just stay wrapped delicately in their boxes, in a kind of nicknack limbo, next to the rest of the hoarded items I’ll never use. Sweet nostalgia.

The secret word is Davenport.

Continue Reading: Bachelor Step #1: THE BACHELOR PAD

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Posted in apartment, art, bachelor pad, decorating, house |

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Kitten Of Evil

May 5, 2009 |

Author admin

by Jonathan B. Perry

My cat Callie lived to the ripe old age of 16, which means that in human age she was already the equivalent of a super crabby, frail, old lady, obviously near death, except that she still had all her teeth and wasn’t afraid to use them on you. There is wisdom in removing the teeth of the elderly. Hours of fun playing Hide and Go Teeth. Even though I might have been gently petting Callie, she would freak out at any moment and decide to use me as a hunted chew toy/scratch post. As much fun as this was for me, pain and scarring usually overrode and reminded me that my cat really was some evil demon spawn who was perhaps rabid or at least incredibly insane. I tried to placate her by bringing her good toys, couches and chairs were her favorites, but she seemed to like the taste of human blood better than polyfil. Her best periods of non-psychotic behavior were mostly when I came home at the end of the day, where she’d let me pet her for a few minutes in exchange for following her to the food bowl so I could fill it to overflowing. This was a joyful, if brief, moment. After that, it was pretty much Tourette’s Tooth Kitty.

I did love my cat, though. Callie, a name that is embarrassingly the most common for a calico, had been in our family since her early cathood, but didn’t come specifically to me until the great family diaspora a few years back (I named the previous family cat Gregoria, but she liked to play in the road. That didn‘t work out so well.). Callie’s acquirement was odd for me, since I have enough trouble taking care of myself on a cold and windy day (honestly, I’m much better). Growing up, she’d been a doll. Even in between the later cat crazies, she could actually be a real sweet little beast.

Callie and I had a good symbiotic relationship where I fed her and cleaned up after her vomitings and other digestive misfirings in return for someone to talk to other than the mean woman in my head that tells me I suck. If she was especially sick (the cat, not the mean woman), we’d play the exciting home game called “Guess Where I Puked”. I never really won that.

My brother Jay has decided that if he ever gets a cat, he’ll name her Pandora, so she can use Pandora’s box. He’s so clever. Of course, cleaning a cat’s litter box is like being on an archaeological dig or panning for gold, but it‘s never a pleasant excursion and you don’t really want the treasure. I’ve mostly overcome the gagging. These events and the abuse from the cat have even inspired me to write thoughtful odes such as “Kitten of Evil” and “Gata Sacrificia”, though she wouldn’t have been impressed even if she could have understood the thoughtful lyrics (the humans aren‘t so impressed either).

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Posted in apartment, bachelor pad, cat |

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My Bachelor Pad

February 6, 2009 |

Author jonathanatos

by Jonathan B Perry

In accordance with my own steps to becoming a Domesticated Bachelor edict, # 1 The Bachelor Pad, I bought a house in October. 5341-melrose2 It’s my first house. The house is younger than I am with a new non-leaking roof and new furnace and a/c. I like it, especially the French doors and the yards, and I hope to do some minor remodeling and landscaping. Until recently, I lived several years in a run down basement apartment that flooded and whose retaining wall to the porch was crumbling. I dreaded a dark morning where I might wake up to find I’d become trapped in my subterranean tomb with a very limited supply of chocolate ice cream and cookies to carry me into the afterlife. I’m sure I have a photo of the wall somewhere, but can’t find it and don’t really want to creep around the property now to photograph it with my phone.

So far, the new house is a bit messy, not being quite unpacked, but no where near as dreadful as the old apartment. One of the benefits of maintaining a filthy place is that it keeps you from mistakenly inviting visitors over. No one wants to do that. Visitors will only make your house dirtier, consume your french-doors3 resources, and still judge your house/apartment regardless of how spic and span it is. I know this factually because I have friends that popped in at the most inopportune times, such as when I was moving the cat’s indoor sand volleyball court from the kitchen to the bathroom. Since then, the legend of my squalor has traveled the circuit of acquaintances and developed a fantastic mythology that has winged serpents crossing the threshold to hunt rabid country-city-suburb mice (which is quite nearly a falsehood). With the apartment all to yourself you can live free of the many encumbrances that might somehow cause you to forget to feed the cat who might die unfed while you’re entertaining judgmental guests. No one wants to risk the beast’s life for the sake of hospitality, unless you actually have a cat and are truly aware of its inherent evil (my cat is already dead, so that’s no longer an issue).

If you do happen to have friends, which I have in the past, you might find it easier to do your socializing at their residences. Often, first rate entertainment is provided and, depending on the friend, there may be pizza or casseroles involved. This is good because in addition to the free nourishment and socialization, you’ve avoided causing any excessive buildup of filth in your own quarters, instead causing it in the quarters of those who can either fix it or just don‘t care. In this way, you may be able to stave off moving for just a little longer without having to clean. Or get married. Vacations are also good to this end.

The secret word is subterranean.

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