Monday, September 01, 2008

looking back: Final Weekend in the Month that Would Not End

OH MY FREAKING GOD this month of August will NOT END.  I realize that it may look like september where you’re sitting but this is the THIRD TIME I’m trying to get this post up, as it were, and August will not “leave the building.” I’m going to try it one more time and then I’ll give the hell up and skip to October ‘09.  See you then.

It’s not that this past weekend has been bad - quite the contrary, it’s been mostly delightful.  But it’s the fourth weekend in a row that was so overstuffed and hyper-agendized that I feel like I have a Fox News Ticker (tm) running across my larynx ("up next, Dan cooks supper - but will they eat it?  Stay tuned - insomnia awaits.  Zachary: “Where’s my bear?").  Let me try to give you a rundown and see if I can’t get into the recovery phase.  I’m still in the “freaking out with all the stuff going on” phase and it’s, well, not restful. 

SO: Friday night I got back from work to find my niece Delia and her parents hanging out in our living room - thankfully, expected.  They brought a gorgeous handmade (by them) quilt for Jesse (may he soon be with us) and tasty burritos for us all from Darkest Palo Alto ("Paul the Castrati").  We munched them with enthusiasm and then most of us piled out to my uncle’s gorgeous place up on the hill, for a family-wide cocktail party.  And by “family wide,” I mean just about every person who could travel was present, including many cousins I very rarely see and a few - I suppose they’re nephews and nieces, so let’s go with that - whom I totally didn’t recognize at all.  Luckily for me the family is really very cool, especially when you get the red wine and mini-pizzas on the table, so we had an excellent time.  Zach and Kel didn’t join us, mostly because Z was too wired and fried ("friared") to handle himself in a house that full of priceless art.  Exactly what do I mean by that?  Funny question.... at one point we were hanging out by the bottom of the stairs when one of the presumed nephews started riding down them on his butt.  Lets face it, the place has an elevator, he was doing this for the sheer joy of it.  I can’t blame him.  However, we couldn’t help noticing that he bumped one of the many framed works lining the staircase as he came down, feet flying and butt bouncing.  What did he nearly knock off the wall?  A pretty well-known Wayne Thiebaud streetscape.  I have to admit, it did me a lot of good to be at a party where a rambunctious 11-year-old can actually almost trash a really nice piece of art, but where it doesn’t quite happen anyway.  Good times.

The next day we saw everybody again, with Zach too, at my niece Ellen’s bat mitzvah at the stunning old Sherith Israel synagogue.  It was a very nice service with a really cool new sidur (prayerbook), that I would actually like to sit down and read at some point.  Ellen did a great job and Zach was even brought into the action, called to serve as an “Ark Attendant” and opening the huge old sliding wooden doors at the proper moment.  His comment, upon pulling his door to the side and gazing up at the gilt ark full of resplendent torahs in their silver decorations and velvet robes: “Awesome!” And in fact I think that’s the recommended response, so he’s right on track. 

After the services we took a break from the luncheon buffet to sneak upstairs with niece Beccy and some of her friends to check out the topmost balcony near the dome.  Okay, maybe I missed the latkes but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. 

Zach ran around and around the small circular floor, and I just gaped at the view - not out, but up and down.  Really nice place they’ve got there.

(Aside: Afterwards Kel was describing something that had happened during the services that had made her a bit anxious, saying it had given her the heebie-jeebies.  “No,” she corrected herself, “not that...”, pausing to let the right word occur to her.  I suggested, “the Hebrew Jebrews?” but it turns out that wasn’t it either.)

Later in the afternoon we got ourselved into mufti and visited Chrissy Field to see the EnviroGlobes display.  It was pretty damn cool (I’ll fix these links soon, but it’s too much trouble right now) (okay that otta fix’em) -

- but the wind was sandblasting us and it was not a pleasant or comfortable experience, so we took a short drive to let the kids play in a forest

technically, this was in the forest

(they love them that forest action) and then just went back home and got some pizza.  We’ve been pizza-ing lately at Gaspare’s for the old-school style and at Orgasmica for the funky neo style, but for a change of pace we opted for Cable Car - just a block from us and always completely empty, they seem to survive on their take-out and delivery service.  They’ve tried many ways to lure in the peoples - big tvs, pool tables, outdoor seating, no outdoor seating… this time when I went to get the ‘za I was, again, the only person in the house apart from staff.  Also, the seating area was all torn up and a new arabic-type mural was painted on one wall.  As I glanced around, the cashier, who’d trotted up from the back of the kitchen, told us that it’s going to be a hookah bar.  NOW you’re talking, I thought, that’ll bring in the hipsters.  As I completed the transaction one of the staff who’d been sitting back in the kitchen area walked briskly past me out the front door.  Trailing behind him was an odor of burning herbs best experienced at concerts such as the Grateful Dead or Phish.  Hookah bar, I wondered?  Some questions earn their own pungency.

The next day we laid low for the morning (I made pancakes, which lent themselves to the lowlaying) with some playground-and-museum-concourse action in the park.  Then Kel and Z and I went out to the east bay to visit friends who’d just come back from China with a new baby who was having a first birthday party.  These are friends we don’t know as well as some of our old college chum crowd, but they’re delightful people and have an amazing house way the hell up in the Oakland hills.  (Aside: Kel walked in on me as I was getting ready to leave for the party.  “Are you wearing that hideous shirt?,” she asked without thinking.  Once she’d said it she realized what a mistake she’d made, but it was too late; I responded, “NOW, I am.") They were serving carnitas as good as any I’ve ever eaten anywhere, with damn fine tamales and a refreshing hibiscus-cooler-and-tequila beverage which I wish I had more of right now. 

I ate many times more than I needed and then we cruised back home so we could cook supper for Scott and Evi (Delia, as it turns out, does not eat).  Dessert was a bunch of apple cake I’d bought at the new local Armenian deli-grocery-bakery, which was good enough to cause me to overeat for the third time in one day.  I wound up staying up too late to try to watch Ironman for free on-line, but the site where I found it was too slow to load and I kind of felt bad to be watching a video that had chinese subtitles and in which occasionally you’d get a silhouette of someone getting up and walking out of the screening room.  I didn’t realize my sensibilities were so delicate, but such blatant bootlegging just felt distasteful. 

The next day was Monday, Laver Day, which we started with another trip to the park - but this time to the Big Playground, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all persons involved, what with the swings and the climbing walls and the play structures and the water features and the rest of it.  Then we took a little down time at home while E/D/S visited a friend; upon their return we all went back to Chrissy Field to frolic in the water, in that it was a gorgeous day with light winds and the high tide was just starting to ebb from the lagoon.  We waded and splashed and dug pits and let the warm water run between our toes, and had a great old time. 

That left us just enough time to order too much food from Ton Kiang and to eat most of it, to let the kids have one last bath together (Z was too tired to be very congenial but still eventually let Delia play with the toy sea horse), and then most everybody went to bed, stuffed and comfy.  Except for me, with my brains on “free rotate” and my sensibilities reeling from yet another weekend of too much stuff to keep it straight.  Hence my investment in this post tonight.  It’s been good to get it out of my brains, finally.  Additionally, I got to debrainify with the use of our new laptop, an unprecedented technological advance in this household, all hooked (or “hookahed") up to the new wireless network that’s now also powering TiVo.  August saw me get a nice new phone, too, and that “hideous” shirt that I really like.  It was a big month.  I will miss it, in retrospect.  In the present, I am so freaking glad it’s over. 

bonus, pending my repair of the above apparently broken links goddamnit (repair completed but bonus retained): the soft drink aisle at New May Wah market.  Drink hearty - you could use the refreshment!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Phat Farm Fresh

I didn’t usually ride the bus with anyone - fellow riders shared the space with me but not my company, by apparently mutal consent.  But this particular Wednesday I’d met up with Dave after work and he hopped the 38 to join me for my ride back home, where his wife and kids were waiting with mine for us to bring in some pizzas. By the time we boarded, the seats were all occupied; we eventually found our way to the back and stood a little aft of the rear stairwell to sway and chat our way home.  That’s a pretty good spot for keeping an eye on things, to the extent there are things upon which one’s eye might be kept - and on the 38, such things are not unheard-of.

We’d gotten well out toward the westside when a small posse boarded at the exit doors by which we were standing: four kids, no older than high school and some younger than that, dressed in regulation trademark t’s and oversize jerseys, all with sagging jeans; they ran along the sidewalk to the stairwell with the glee of children getting away with misbehavior.  Three, anyway, scampered up the steps; the fourth came more slowly and laboriously, elephantine in both movement and proportion.  Morbidly obese, he gulped air in exhaustion at the effort of catching his ride; his knees seemed to buckle in toward each other.  Sweat beaded unattractively on his swollen forehead.  His supersized t-shirt read “Phat Farm.” I thought the phrase had never seemed more accurate.

The big boy made it halfway up the three steps and then stopped, glaring skeptically at the crowd in the aisle.  With something less than perfect dignity he sank down and took a seat on the stairs, panting and wiping his brow with a massive hand.  The kids who’d come on with him stuck around near him, standing at the head of the steps in postures of studied casualness.  The three of them together probably weighed less than he did alone.

They all began to converse in the staccatto patois shared by youth around here regardless of their ethnicity, but shortly the big kid’s cellphone rang and with an expression of supreme inconvenience he fished the communications lozenge out from a pocket of his voluminous trousers.  That expression intensified as he glanced at the caller ID, and he began the conversation peremptorially and without pleasantries:

“Wotdefokyouwan’?  Yeah I’m busy, man I’m out.  I’m OUT!  Cuz I go out sometimes!  Cuz my dad sed I could!  FUCK!  Well I can’t!  I CAN’T!  FUK YOU, bitch!  FUK!  Cuz I got stuff to do!  STUFF!  FUK!”

The conversation continued in a similar vein for a few more minutes, expostulations and expletives in a thin bitter broth of pure negativity.  I couldn’t ignore him - he was too big and loud and immediate - but I couldn’t follow the conversation either.  All I could really tell was that I’d have hung up on him quite a bit earlier than how long he took to terminate the call with a curt snapping shut of his phone.  Disgust was inscribed unmistakeably on his enormous platter of a face as he crammed the phone back into his pants, and sweat still trickled in humid rivulets down his cheeks. 

The bus made its usual stops, lurching and shuddering into brief stillnesses; the crowd of riders circulated regularly and the rear exit doors were in steady use - or one of them was, anyway.  At each stop the friends of Phat Farm, as if by unspoken compact, hauled out and held the door open for departing passengers from curbside, then hauled back up and in again to their established spots for
the next segment of their ride. Phat Farm never moved, except to shake his head, sneering, and to cradle his beaded brow in his hands. 

Dave and I watched it all with shifting emotions.  I didn’t think much of PF’s behavior, and hoped he’d leave the bus before I had to circumnavigate him, but he was going nowhere (other than where the bus was taking him in the grandeur of his sour passivity).  Eventually we reached our stop and stepped out down the exit.  I tried to minimize contact with Phat but couldn’t help noticing, as I passed him on the other side of the stairwell, the acrid scent of his grimacing, perspiring enormity. 

Off the bus and back into the relatively fresh air of 6th Avenue (and when a KFC/Taco Bell’s offgassing is “relatively fresh” you know the alternative is pretty bad), Dave and I shared our thoughts.  “At first he irritated me,” Dave admitted, “but then I realized that he couldn’t have gotten any further on the bus if he tried.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, “and the strain on his knees was too much for him to ride standing anyway.  But still, I didn’t care for the way he spoke to his friends, or whoever called him.”

Dave countered, “He probably gets treated like that himself.  I can’t imagine it’s easy for a kid that big.”

“Maybe,” I replied.  “The kids with him didn’t treat him badly.  I’ve known some pretty big people.  Some of them were full of bitterness and some of them weren’t.  I can’t help but think that some of his anger is expressing itself in fat, and and some of that fat is expressing itself in anger.”

“Maybe,” Dave concluded equivocally.  Then we picked up our two pizzas and carried them six easy blocks home, where the wives were waiting for us with cold beer.  Supper was delicious and the kids frolicked gleefully.  We left Phat Farm to his own grotesque devices.  Priorities, people.

(typed on my brand new laptop, and remotely uploaded with > new wireless connection.  Damn but this is a cool millenium.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

God’s Half-Tube and the Little Green Guy: In Lieu of Actual Writing

Freaking ridiculous, or as the ancients put it, freakus ridiculousus.  August is turning out to be as intense and demanding as I could ever have expected, and my expectations were high.  Dad came for a visit, as I’ve mentioned; last weekend, it was mom, and next weekend, Delia and her parents (one of whom shares more of my genetic material than any other person on the planet).  I’ve built furniture, laundered a mountain of vaguely musty linens, installed and repaired (with expert assistance) a wireless network, and am now waiting for a new laptop and neighborhoodie.  There’s a bat mitzvah (with associated pre-event shindig), a newly-adopted child’s first birthday party, a dear old friend’s locally-famous pigmeats party, and we’re busily pulling together final paperwork in anticipation of getting the call to fly off and pick up Jesse in Seoul.  Another friend, with whom we lost touch years ago, just called yesterday to suggest that I might do some voice-over narration for him.  And still - STILL - I yearn to blog. 

Well, maybe that’s an overstatement.  I sort of want to blog, though.  I’ve got a transit tale and a poem percolating in the works, but I’ve lost one of my prime writing-times with the change in my morning commute, and even so I spent that ride today sketching out a conference I’m planning for January.  But I’m not going to share the Partnership Grants conference plans with you.  I have more respect for you than that.  Plus, I don’t want to give anything away in case any of you out there happen to be Partnership Grant recipients.  Instead, I’ll just share a brief anecdote from this past weekend.  I’m sure you’ll find it profound and uplifting.  It’s either that or upfound and prolifting, and I think I need a special truss for that. 

So ANYWAY, Congregation Beth Sholom has finally finished its new synagogue, and for what it’s worth (not much) I think it’s a knockout.  The previous incarnation of this structure was a traditional 1920’s edifice with doric columns and stained glass, a staid and unimaginative place to daven.  Or so I have it on good authority and unfettered imagination; I never went there myself though I live but two blocks away.  I tried once but got shut out (high holidays do attract quite the crowd).  In the 70s it was rehabbed with the addition of a big bulky assembly hall on one side, and a clumsy portico with curved bay windows tacked tackily to the front of the sanctuary.  It aged ungracefully and finally the congregation had enough and tore it down, replacing it with a cool new structure that roused my curiousity.

Thus it was that on Saturday - THE LORD’S day, you know - Kel and Zach and Mom and I took a little stroll to check the place out.  It was 2 in the afternoon and we had it to ourselves, which was nice - no irritating tribal-types to distract from the clean lines and austere colors.  The front doors admitted us to an open-air plaza with broad steps leading up to a wide patio fronting the sanctuary.  The sanctuary itself is shaped like the hull of a large boat, with rows of seats rising on either side of a central aisle and the bima, or pulpit, in the middle.  The ceiling is far overhead (as well it should be), coffered in a modern style and rich purple in color, with plentiful hidden skylights.  Even if the place wasn’t brand new it would inspire the soaring of the soul that is the hallmark of spiritual practice. 

Zach hasn’t been to many synagogues - I will admit that his spiritual practice has been honored mostly in the breach.  It’s not that he doesn’t have the sensitivity for it - quite the opposite.  We just have not made opportunities available for him.  But here, we explained that this was a special place to be quiet and let goodness fill you up, and he seemed to understand.  Kel had taken a seat halfway up one of the sides, and Z took a break from assiduously testing out all the chairs to come and sit down next to her.  “This is a place,” he explained to her, “where I think about Yoda.” After a brief pause, he continued: “He’s little… and green.” A numinous light filled his eyes and his face was serene.  Indeed, the force is strong with this one.

(We have not yet shown him Star Wars but he’s seen some video of Yoda breakdancing.  I’m not sure how this will affect his theological development, but I think it must all be for the best.  His cousin is all about Vader since she saw him at Disneyland, and I’m thinking they’ll play well off each other in that regard.)

We will be checking out a new congregation for high holidays, a renewal jew-bu hippie-dippie deal that meets at the arboretum in the park, still within easy walking distance of home.  Beth Sholom is closer, yes, but I think the scene there might be a bit constrained for me, if not for Z, so far as my Rosh Hashona vibe is concerned.  But now I feel confident that Zach will be up for the davening.  Focus your kavanah on the little green guy within you, my man, and the path to righteousness will reveal itself. 

Up next: me going to sleep.  Stay tuned for nothing.