I think my first brush with greatness came at the early age of six when I reported a group of teenagers to my father for driving up to me as I played with chalk on the sidewalk and offering me candy; my father then informed the police. Maybe they were actually offering me candy, and if that happens to be the case I am indeed sorry, but I wrote their license plate number with a rock as they drove off. The police called my house a few hours later and comforted my parents with the news that the teenagers had been brought downtown. In the paper, no real mention of my name was made. I felt like I was ripped out of several well deserved city and county awards.

Let’s move forward to the time my third grade class planted a tree on Arbor Day. There was a newspaper photographer there snapping photos. A few days later I saw the back of my head in a photo in the paper. I tried to convince people that it was indeed truly me, but hey, that could be any kid wearing a striped shirt picking his nose.

At the age of 12 or 13 I had been riding my bike on a summer’s afternoon in the foothills with some friends. It was quite a strenuous workout because I had this junky yellow ten-speed that weighed more than I did. We had picked it up for three bucks at a yard sale. I had worked on the brakes myself, and never had the right tools for the job. I was wearing a rollerblading helmet that was a bit too big and couldn’t really see well. As we traversed along a busy street I was suddenly laying on my side, not knowing what had violently jarred me right off my bike. I slid the helmet up and out of my eyesight to see an older gentleman, still on his bicycle after our collision, looking at me with an angry yet bewildered glare. Things took a turn for the worse as I noticed that this man was leading a large group of probably 20 bikers of all ages. As I pulled myself up they continued on their way. Several of them slid snide remarks in my direction under their breath. My bike didn’t work quite right after that, but I forced my way home just in time to catch the evening news. Hmmm, that was odd. The man on TV looked very familiar. “Hey, that is the guy I just hit with my bike!” I said out loud. My mom instantly yelled “You’re grounded!” before I could even blink. I had rudely interrupted some kind of memorial for the man’s grandson who had been hit and killed by a car. If I had timed it just slightly different, I could have hit that man while he was being interviewed on TV. So close.

I have so many instances of how I am almost famous that I will continue to grace this blog with. It might be must too much to throw them all into one place at one time.

My brother and I infiltrated my work today with small adhesive wall hooks and a prepared picture frame. Our destination was the Fish Room, upstairs:

My brother carried a camera to document our work.

The day was stormy and clouded over, the skies heavy with rain like a sponge that has been left in the rain. “Andy,” I said, “Andy, those clouds far off in the distance are heavy and grey, like wet silk.” At some point I actually said this.

In Mythbusters Episode 26: Salsa Escape, Jamie and Adam tested whether wet silk — specifically, silk soaked in urine — is strong enough to break iron bars. It is not. The skies this day intimated an urgent need to pee, heaven’s bladder distended by a late lunch and Mountain Dew. Heaven found a restroom just as we arrived at the restaurant: the town of Lindon. This quaint village’s rural farms and idyllic parking lots would not be spared nature’s relief, which coursed down in mighty streaming torrents. As we fled my car and ran to the building, I thought: surely we will be plunged under, yet still we bobbed back to the surface — back to the surface, where our task awaited us.

Fish Room decor.

el sepulcro de los pescados

The strike was surgical, clinical, sanitary — in short, hermetic, hygienic, and completed on schedule; that is to say in a timely fashion, without unforeseen interference from any intervening interlopers. My first idea, the seed of the plan sprouted in my brain’s fertile crevices, was to hang on one of the room’s cluttered walls a small picture of a gruesome harvesting of beluga caviar –

– like this little lady, but cut in half down the middle, bleeding, with swarthy Baltic whalers slick with her black eggs. Then I thought, if I did that I would be fired! It was critical to my mission that I not be fired.

If my brain were an animal it would be a fish, for slick as one of those it darted through a swift river of thought to a new idea, reeling in from sparkling waters an image sublimely suited to my purposes. I would print out and frame a screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, of Link holding up a fresh catch, thusly:

Photoshop is my *best friend*, not only for casting Link into nostalgic sepia tones, but for making the following series of pictures discernable despite the room’s dim lighting. I like the grainy, shot-on-the-fly quality of the images, because they were caught on the fly, and because it imparts a feeling of risk, as though we were filming without a license — “stealing shots” — which we were doing. The City of Lindon pursues unauthorized filmographers with prejudice.

Lighting the fuse.

The hanging.

The picture in place.

The Fish Room, after.

In our haste to flee we took no more pictures. I am indebted to my brother for capturing this escapade on camera; without his assistance, I’d have nothing to show for it, or at least the shots wouldn’t have me in them, and the quality might have been better.

This post receives the Pilcrow Seal of Approval.

Codicil — on February 25th, 2008, two-and-a-half years after our original escapade, I returned to the site of our conquest to examine the premises, and discover if Link was still as I had left him.

The wall hook is gone. Link’s moved to the windowsill. He greets diners at his table intimately, pressing his wares as subtly as a fisherman Maître d’. Try the halibut tacos, he whispers. They are fresh and delicious with a crisp corn shell. I have been here all these years, watching, waiting for one — such as you — to order them. Will you brave the waters? – or will you, too, disappoint me?

Yes, I knew you would.

Codicil to Codicil – I loaded the original pictures into an image editor to correct the heretofore terrible white balance. I think it did a remarkable job. If you can’t see the difference, delete your browser cache and reload the page. (Isn’t that the answer to everything?)