Thursday, August 31, 2006

Parkzak, Tablezak

I’ve felt a bit under the weather lately, which is a bitch because the weather has been gorgeous and I’d like to be out in it rather than skulking under it, but as the ancients told us, that sand’s for pounding, son.  Meantime I have been doing less writing of new stuff because my work duties are particularly intense this time of year, and because of a variety of other amusing little projects that have been sapping my strength and vigor, or at least my free time.  In lieu of a full-on essay or my rant about businesses that have chosen ill-advised names or ad slogans (yeah I did it once before but, somehow, stupidity has re-emerged like crabgrass on the lawn of wisdom), I figgered I’d just share a little piece of the main event, in a segment I’d like to call “Flashing on Zach.”

But first, a brief return to a subject addressed in the last post: my porn name.  As my mom (hi, mom!) points out in the comments, I never lived on Formosa street - that was Aunt Arline and Uncle Morris. We lived nearby, on Sycamore.  Unfortunately, all the coolness that is “Bozo Formosa” is utterly lost in the lameness of “Thumper Sycamore.” However, I think, if I were permitted to break the algorithim and use the street name first and the pet name second, “Sycamore Thumper” may just be marketable, pornwise.  Updates will be provided as they become available.

Also, two posts down, I mentioned an iPod mix I was listening to, and someone berated me for failing to mention what was on it.  Ever eager to please, a week or so after I should have done, here’s the “Drummer’s Choice” playlist:

* Mike Doughty: Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well
* Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Chase the Rainbow
* Beastie Boys: In 3’s
* Mofro and John JJ Grey: Ho Cake
* Chico Hamilton: For Mods Only
* David “Fathead” Newman: 13th Floor
* Particle: Shoe Goo (live)
* Grant Green: The Final Countdown
* Derek and the Dominos: Evil (live)
* Pearl Jam: Animal (live
* moe.: Plane Crash (live)
* Robert Walter and the 20th Congress: Instant Death (live)
* Trout Fishing in America: Not Fade Away

This mix was set up on behalf of a good friend who played drums back when we went to college together.  I’ve been wanting to send him some music for a long time and today, goddamn it, I’m going to the post office and I’m mailing that sucker.  All the songs were chosen because they have strong percussion lines which are either mindblowingly complex, or are solid and straight and clean in case you want to drum along.  The last song has no percussion at all, but takes an acoustically trippy take on a classic tune and begs to be drummed to. 

Okay, Sawni, I hope that satisfies your curiosity.  Now, let’s Flash on Zak!

Over the weekend we went to the Japanese Tea Garden in GG Park.  It’s a very popular and beautifully-landscaped little subzone between the museum concourse, Stow Lake, and the Arboretum.  Z-man had a great time wandering around and picking up mulch.  Eventually he got whiny because we had to carry him around when we were anywhere near water, and there’s watercourses all over the T*garden, so we had to carry him a lot.... once we got tired of that we walked home via the concourse, which Zak found, as always, to be an endless garden of mulchy delights.  Here’s a few frozen moments of him enjoying his mulchtastic self:

It also deserves well to be reiterated that the abovereferenced Sawni found and arranged to transport to us a fantastic hand-made mid-cent table and chair set built for tiny people, of whom Zadok is indubitably one.  We picked it up on Monday evening and unpacked it immediately, much to Z-meister’s delight - to wit:

Okay my blogly buddies, that’s going to have to be enough for right now.  I’ve got doings afoot and it’s time to get to’em.  Enjoy your Thursday and grab something organic or handmade today - both, if you’ve got time!

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

What Sticks to the Wall

I feel as if I ought to get a post up here but I don’t really have much energy to put into it.  I’ve got a few pre-written, of course, but that requires a lot of typing and reading my crappy chickenscratch writing and paying attention to the same subject for way too long for me today.  Let me just see what the little notebook has for us today.  Warning: this is totally disjointed. 

A major SHOUT OUT to Sawni the amazing and fabulous!  She saw a kid’s table and chair set at a lawn sale in freaking RURAL OREGON and arranged to get the whole shooting match packaged and shipped down to my charming Zacharoid.  We picked it up last night.  Photos of the delighted new owner to follow, but in the meantime, this is the hippest mid-cent aesthetic that any 18-month-old could desire.  Take my word for it, he loves it, and so do we.  Thanks, Sawni!

Additional shout out to Beard Papa and the tastiest cream puff I’ve had in recorded history.  The line stretched out the door, down the steps and to the sidewalk, but it was worth it.  Plus, we visited the Zeum playground which totally made me resentful of how cool playgrounds have gotten since I was told to go out and entertain myself with a mop handle and a broken dream in the asphalt rec yards of my youth.  Little wankers don’t know how good they’ve got it.

Shifting gears slightly: It occurred to me that my porn name - my first pet, plus the first street where I lived - was really lame: Bozo Wortser.  Then I realized that, though I don’t remember it, I actually lived first on Formosa Avenue, and Bozo Formosa is a great porn name.  But now I realize that my first pet, when I was really little, was a little dog named Thumper, and that would make me Thumper Formosa.  I think I’ll stick with Bozo Formosa, though.  It seems confident, cosmopolitan, and maybe a bit less self-referential. 

I had to go out yesterday and find a stationery store. Luckily, it was in exactly the same place. 

There was a toy by Ideal in the 1970s called Bing Bang Boing.  This was not a game with rules and winners; it was more like pieces for crafting complex constructions that would move a metal marble in entertaining ways - up long inclines, around spinning spindles, bouncing across a series of taut drum-like membranes.... This toy had the following names for its component parts:
* Bingle Flinger
* Hum Drums
* Bangelator
* Flicker-Dicker
* Boingle Bucket
I can’t even start to imagine what kind of game would have parts with those names today.  It’s sad, I think, when I can look back to the 1970s as a time of naieve innocence. 

That will have to be enough of a brain-dump for me right now.  I’ve got some work to get to and all that.  Hope your Tuesday pulls itself together a little and starts acting respectfully.  I mean, really. 

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The SHHNing

It was really a short walk - just three blocks; and by the time I was heading home, most folk had already cleared out.  It’s not really an “after hours” part of town where I work.  But even in that short distance, amidst that diffuse enpeoplement, I got the shavehead headnod a fulsome thrice.

So, you ask fragmentally: shavehead headnod? And I, shinywise, smile and nod my shaven head - but not with the SHHN.  It’s just a regular nod for you fuzzpates. 

Permit me to expound:

First of all, a shaved head is a bald head, but not necessarily vice versa.  Some guys go bald, but don’t shave.  Then again, some guys shave full heads of hair.  It’s a choice, shaveheadedness is, that seems to be influenced by (but not dependent on) alopecia.  It’s not the right choice for everybody, regardless of hair-growing capacities, but for the last few years it’s been the right choice for me. 

Lately, now, my choice has gotten a lot more popular.  At times I find myself at a bar or street corner (okay, drinking under a streetlight, you caught me and I hope you’re proud of yourself) and there’s two or three or four other shaveheads coincidentally right there with me.  Sort of makes it seem pedestrian, in the pejorative sense.  Yet I and my gleaming clerestory persevere. 

It’s also worth mentioning that shaveheadedness is distinct from skinheadedness.  The latter is a polticial statement, a sneering slap at an overcoiffed world. But shaveheadedness is content-neutral; it argues no brief and stakes no claim.  It’s an aesthetic, nothing more.  It can be hard to discern the difference at a distance, but after a few minutes in close proximity, it becomes much more obvious.  Shaveheads may sometimes scowl, but they don’t sneer. 

So: I’m walking to the bus stop in my suit and my casually untucked stripy shirt.  I’ve got my messenger saq over one shoulder and my naked head over both shoulders.  I’ve had a long day.  I’m not out to connect with my fellow man - I just want to get the hell home.

The “drummer’s choice” iPod mix is pounding my tympani and I walk with loping strides, jaw set and spine erect.  I am watching the sidewalk for people I need to avoid or evade, and that’s when I see him: my height, solid build, suede blazer and expensively frayed pants.  His complexion is coffee and his features are set in a scowl with which personal experience has made me familiar.  Also, his head is shaved.  He, too, walks tall and strides wide. His eyes, too, are on the oncoming world. 

As we pass each other our eyes briefly - very briefly - lock, and we both clamp our jaws just a little more tightly and dip our brows two degrees down. It’s a tiny gesture, which we make simultaneously.  It’s something I very much doubt anyone else even saw, much less noticed.  It was the SHHN.  Our fraternal handshake. We briefly presented our frontal lobes to each other in a display of mutual recognition and non-involvement.  “Yo, shavehead.” That’s all it was.  We were both too tightly wound and slickscalped to bother with more.  We moved smoothly in our mutual opposite directions.  The moment was destined to fade rapidly in my selectively porous memory. 

But one block further along, it happens again.  This dude had chocolate skin-tone, a nice suit and shirt (all tucked in with a dimpled necktie), and an attache’ case.  He’s a little softer in the gut but his jaw is properly locked down and his eyes are properly wary.  As we pass, we drop a mutual nod.  Just a little one. That’s all it takes.  That makes two, and it gets me thinking.

One more block and I’m at the bus stop, which occupies a small island in the middle of traffic in the middle of the street at a busy intersection at the feet of a fistful of tall buildings.  A bay wind pushes the cars and trucks along and I stand with my fellow commuters waiting for our common ride.  Jaywalkers occasionally stride through our patient assembly as we wait.  One, I sense as soon as he steps off the curb behind me: Tall and burly in a tough overshirt, brown denim pants and heavy, pristine workboots.  His pale jaw is stubbly with scruff and a Carhartt’s cap rides low on his brow.  I can tell instantly that his hat covers an otherwise naked scalp.

He’s just passing through, our concrete island a mere way-station for him on his trip from the east sidewalk to the west.  He doesn’t slow down as he cruises through.  But he does take a brief moment, without breaking stride, to glance my way, clamp his molars, and give me the nod.  The SHHN.  Per regulation, it’s a quickie.  That’s how we smoothies prefer it.