Friday, September 05, 2008

Friday On My Mind, but Off My Rocker

Happy friday and good riddance to this week.  Damn but it’s been hard to bounce back, and this is coming from one who bounces for both fun and profit on the US Pro-Am Bouncing circuit.  In fact I actually did bounce for a solid 25 minutes this morning on the mini-tramp, but that was just a warm-up for this weekend, which will be dedicated to getting some goddamn sleep and watching stupid movies and Burn Notice with a cold beer and my feet up.  And with this circumscribed worldview and lack of focus in mind, let me throw down a few chewy tidbits just so you don’t think I’ve spurned you for another blog with a bigger hit-count (as if!):

1) I saw a bus pulling up to my stop this morning while still on the sidewalk in front of my house.  Saying to myself that it wasn’t worth my effort to run for it, I started running for it anyway, cutting across the greenbelt to narrow the distance.  I noticed as I reached the far sidewalk that it was a regular 38, not the Limited or Express (hm, sounds like I’m shopping for pants at stores in the mall (and for the record I do not wear 38s)), so it really wasn’t worth my effort.  I also noticed, as I returned to an easy loping pace, an unpleasant sliding sensation under my right heel.  YES!  DOG WASTE!  JAMMED UP INTO THE TREADS OF MY FAVORITE BUSINESS SKETCHERS!  I tried to pound it free by slapping the shoe against the curb, and then tried to abrade it out by grinding my shoe into sandy dirt; then I received a free cup of Peet’s coffee at the bus stop from a candidate for district supervisor and caught the BX, whereon I sat quietly, inhaling the strong dark aroma of unsweetened coffee, seeking solace in its warmth and richness.  You know what?  It smelled like dog crap.  Now I am going to have to find a way to clean out that shoe before it makes me sick as I sit here at my desk.  How about putting it in the microwave in the coffee room?  Anyone have any experience drying out shoe poo that way?  I’m afraid it may have some impact on the lingering scent of butter-flavored popcorn....

2) I’ve been avoiding political rants lately on this blog (not that I have the same discretion in my personal conversations, just ask me about Sarah Palin if you’ve got 40 minutes or so), but this one is just too juicy not to flog: I didn’t see any of the RNC convention but I understand that Johnny M, the Elephantine Presidential Candidate, presented his speech in front of a big screen on which was depicted a stately structure with a broad lawn.  Why?  Well, it’s a nice break from the “Grecian splendor” of the Donkeycratic speeches in Denver, which got them into so much trouble - but why *that* building, and what was it anyway?  Well one of my favorite blogs has revealed the solution, or at least the short answer to the second question and a damn fine idea about the first one.  The building depicted is Walter Reed Middle School in NoHo, which I would have attended had I lived three blocks east of my actual home growing up; instead I went to Robert Milliken Jr High, named after the guy who measured the atom (it was a 38 regular (which means I would not have had to run across the turdmeadows to reach it)).  Milliken was not an especially memorable place; Reed had, at least, a much nicer campus.  Nice enough to be the backdrop for the RNC convention’s main speaker?  Hmm… maybe.  Or maybe - just maybe - somebody was told to get a photo of Walter Reed MEDICAL CENTER, where this nation’s stalwart fighting forces go to recuperate after suffering casualty in the service of liberty?  Sure, that makes sense - ex-P.O.W. with permanent injuries, professing interest in reforming a D.C. establishment that has taken flack (so to speak) for, among other failures, serious deficiencies in care and facilities at WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER… So the call went out, Get me a photo of Walter Reed to look impressive behind Johnny Mac, and they found this one but they didn’t like it so they went with my rival junior high school.  This, my friends, is why we need a president who doesn’t need on-the-job training on how to use The Google (tee-em).  Visual proof is at TPM Muckraker. 

3) Here’s a little something-something that will only be funny to those of you with extensive yoga practice experience.  However, I assure those of you without such experience, this would really be funny if you knew squat about yoga (ba-dum).  I’ve seen a lot of these “office yoga” guides, the sort of thing that gets taped to the bottom of your computer monitor or pinned up in a coffee room, encouraging folk to do some basic exercises so they don’t get cramped up and rupture a disk or something while sitting at their brainiac machines for 32 hours a day.  I’m guilty as anyone (moreso than some) of failing to take breaks, not shaking out my hands or limbering up my back, letting my neck slowly turn into a column of twigs and pebbles so I can’t turn my head without repositioning my feet, preferably by placing them a pedicure bath while a bevy of professionals kneads my sorely knotted cervical musculature.  However, let’s be honest, those “roll your head/stretch your arms/flex your toes” exercises are not yoga.  Yoga is a demanding, vigorous practice that integrates body, breath and spirit.  It is sweaty, demanding, and can change your life.  Yoga is not a short or easy path, but it is a rewarding one.  Let us not demean it with comparisons to small-scale desk-chair isometrics. 

Instead, let us demean it by suggesting the following actual, full-body postures that truly do represent a form of yoga that is designed to enhance cube-farm fitness:
* Downward Faxing Dog
* Exalted Stapler
* Salutation To Whom It May Concern
* Phone Tree Posture
* Task Chair Posture
* Kabhallapotty Break
* Staff Pose
* COBRA

It is to laugh, is it not?  Is not all of it to laugh?  It is, truly.  Don’t sass me.  I’ve had a long week.  Next week: some posts about music!  Everybody enjoys that, right? 

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.