Of all the toys of my youth, not many survived in a decent looking shape and so they were left behind. When, in 2000, I found myself in California, alone, with a few extra bucks, with an eBay account, I bought this Megatron.

While I had loved “Star Wars” toys during my pre-pubescent years, “The Transformers” heralded something bigger, more Shakespearean. If “Star Wars” found its root in The Hero with 1,000 Faces, “The Transformers” were rooted in Hamlet, King Lear, and the Roman Empire.

Megatron, above, transforms into a toy that looks like a gun a real, not-safe-for-kids, gun. You pull his trigger, it goes “snap.” In his fully transformed form as a Walther P38 there’s a rifling attachment and an arm brace. It’s a scarily good approximation of a firearm.

On top of this, his pieces are not all plastic. There’s some heavy metal, the kind that if you threw it at your annoying sibling stitches may ensue, danger.

Finally, you can see that the designers were struggling from their Asian point of reference to translate the facial styling to a Western consumer. The head shape is distinctly samurai-informed and the eyes are vaguely Styx Mr. Roboto styled.

In any case, I re-encountered Megatron.

Contents

• Update
  • Beginning the Move
  • Enjoying an Office
• Blog Posts
  • The KNACK Sticker
  • Onion Crunch
  • Hyperreality in Central Texas

Update

Beginning the Move

We had a really lovely long Easter weekend. As mentioned in the previous letter, we played hooky from responsibility one more day and went ice skating at the LeFrak center. After a fun skating session, we headed back to Manhattan, picked up Byron and started considering the move.

Invariably, in every NYC move, there are things you get and things you lose in each move. We’re gaining a bike room, proximity to the park, proximity to restaurants, and a host of good things. But we’re losing built-in storage. The rooms are, effectively square boxes, a utility closet, and a linen closet. This means we have two tasks at hand: buying more storage and letting go of things that just sit on shelves.

I made a major cull of books and clothes, and Lauren has done / is doing the same. Most of the furniture we installed a few years back won’t really work in the new place so we’ve been taking it apart and have been arranging for its proper disposal. It’s a full-time job.