Tuesday, September 30, 2003

ADOLPHO THE THIRD: Installment the Next

(Note: This is the third hunk of a serialized story that I’m posting this week for reasons that will remain locked in the darkest chambers of my bosum for the time being.  For part one, look back here.  Part two appears here.  Now, buckle up and keep your hands and head inside the tram, it’s time for the next installment of:)

ADOLPHO’S BIG NIGHT:

II.  THE PROFESSIONALS

Adolpho had been bopping along to the beat, resting his eyes and savoring the physical sensation of a deep, strong bass line.  As he raised his glass to drain the final mouthful of lager, he stepped back for balance.  Swallowing, he lowered the glass.  “Buy you another?” The voice in his ear was honeyed.  The speaker was also honeyed, and tall and beautiful.  She had a slim and striking physique, high cheekbones and feline eyes, expensive blonde hair and perfect makeup.  Her tiny black dress looked more like a tattoo than clothing.  Adolpho checked to either side to see to whom she spoke.  There was no one else around. 

Returning his gaze to her, she smiled broadly.  “You mean me?” he asked. 

“Sure, it looks like you’re fresh out.  What are you drinking?”

“Whatever you like,” he replied.  “Beer, I guess.  Lager.” She flashed a wink that turned his knees to water, and turned on a stiletto heel toward the bar.  Adolpho leaned on a nearby table and watched her go to capture the bartender’s attention.  He was too stunned to smile, but glanced around to see whose table he’d crashed - to see, in fact, if anyone was there who had noticed his good fortune.

Monday, September 29, 2003

ADOLPHO’S BIG NIGHT: Chapter 2

(Note: This is the second piece of a serialized story that I’m posting this week while I concentrate on a few other matters with my writing time.  For part one, look back here.  Now, let’s hunker down for the thrills and excitement of:)

THE FAMILY

Adolpho had been bopping along to the beat, resting his eyes and savoring the physical sensation of a deep, strong bass line.  As he raised his glass to drain the final mouthful of lager, he stepped back for balance.  A hard elbow caught him in the kidney and he gasped, choking on the now-flat beer.  Eyes watering, he turned abruptly.  Before he could stop coughing and focus on whoever had struck him, a meaty hand on a massive arm thrust forward to seize hold of him, fingers wrapping around his throat, squeezing, nearly circling his neck.  Adolpho�s eyes continued to water and his tongue began to swell as he gaped at his attacker, and the three other men who were clearly with him.  They were grim-faced, all wearing tailored suits and silk neckties.  One was short, with an ugly scar at the corner of his mouth; one, of standard height and weight but with a robust build and dour sneer; one, who might charitably be called husky; and the one outsized gargantua who was nearly lifting Adolpho from the ground by his larynx.

Friday, September 26, 2003

The Spirit and the Flesh: Chuckles Looks Inward; Adolpho Steps Out

Good yontiff to you all.  Tonight begins one of my most intense periods of introspection and spirituality, the head of the year or Rosh Hashana - the first of ten days in which my forebears tell me I should clear my karma and get my head on straight.  I’m not too good at following such orders usually, but this particular holyday really works for me.  The hollow blast of shofars, the parables and prayers that salvage for me a sense of self-worth even in the midst of self-abnegation, the official permission to hit “restart” - I get a lot out of this process. 

Maybe I’ll hear something tonight or tomorrow that will be worth sharing with you all here; maybe not.  That’s not why I go.  However, I’d be sorely distracted if I thought I wasn’t keeping up with my posts during my renewal phase - I’m just that shallow.  What’s more, you all have given me a significant psychic boost in this past year, and I know you’ll be in my mind as I daven with the jewbu-s of Chochmat HaLev.  Y’all are stuck in my head, whether I like it or not.  I need to make accomodations for you if I hope to keep my focus where it belongs.

So here’s my proposal: Last year I wrote a story or five.  (Not sure which.) The way it’s set up, though, gives me posting material for today and all of next week.  So I’ll post the first portion here and now, and next week I’ll put up the rest, one chunk at a time.  It’s kind of long (even by my standards) so you might just burn out on it.  That’ll be fine.  I’m comfortable dumping too much here for you; it’s the failure to dump enough that would ride my mind.  So without further ado, I humbly present:

ADOLPHO’S BIG NIGHT

Adolpho stood with his back to the door while the others crowded around a cocktail table, leaning over it, focused on the effort of conversing over the throb of the house mix.  The unfinished brick walls of the club compressed the long room, enforcing conviviality among the many nighthawks stopping in for drinks.  Strangers were starting new friendships and friends forged new intimacies over finger food and tidy cocktails.  Adolpho and his party stood near the back, where a dj spun vinyl in front of the door of a huge safe from which the front face had been removed, replaced with glass that exposed the massive mechanisms inside.  The postindustrial tone was echoed by rippling plastic sheeting running the length of one wall and fiber-optic sputniks opposite it over the bar.  The light was low but not dim, the air was rich but not thick, and the sound was pervasive but not intrusive.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Deer Diary

It was the shank of the evening and we were full.  I mean, really full.  Whenever we eat at Andy and Heidi’s place, eating too richly, too many things and too much of them are the house rules.  Good thing Andy’s my doctor or I wouldn’t trust him. 

So supper was over and our eyes were slightly bulging from the mountains of food we’d eaten.  Time for a nice post-prandial meander along the dark wooded streets twisting through the steep hillside where Andy and Heidi live up near Grizzly Peak.  Grizzly Peak is an anacronistic misnomer - there are no more grizzlies around there.  Lots of wildlife, but not carniverous bears.  Mainly just coons, polecats, gophers, voles - and, of course, the deer.  Andy calls them rats on stilts, but it’s fun to see wild deer - a fawn shyly nibbling from a rosebush or a doe demurely peeking from thick underbrush.  Noble creatures. 

Chaz and Lori and Kel and I ambled aimlessly along the narrow serpentine lanes, breathing clean ionized night air and peering out over the university and city and bay and other city and both bridges from on high.  We chatted about work and life and love and generally silly stuff, as always.  And then we held up, confronted by something I’d never before encountered - a tough deer.

This was more of a buck, I suppose.  A big boy.  Eight or ten point rack, and he was very close, looking straight at us, lowering his head a foot or two to stare us right in the eyes. He was in the front hedge of a house just down from Andy’s place, helping himself to some tasty shrubbery.  His jaw worked the foliage slowly, deliberately, like a pitcher or a gunslinger with a chaw of cutleaf.  His eyes were blacker by far than the starless night that surrounded us.  Saliva dripped from his jaws in a foamy viscous cascade.  Without taking his eyes off of us he pulled another mouthful of leaves from the lovingly and expensively tended bush, daring us to stop him. 

We stood frozen for several minutes, wondering if it was safe to pass as he masticated his way through the neighbor’s garden.  We wanted him to go away and leave us an open road.  No dice, he communicated wordlessly, munching along almost belligerently in front of us.  After several minutes of waiting, we figured that it would be safer for us to sneak by while he was still occupied with his meal, than when there was nothing else to distract him.  One at a time we filed past, hugging the opposite curb, trying not to look at him or his crown of swords. 

Okay, so it was a deer - ‘just a deer.’ And I have been given the “move on” by a rutting elk.  But so what.  We were drunk and he was huge; his head was a deadly weapon and we didn’t even have a cellphone.  Maybe we could have taken him, if we’d had to.  It wasn’t worth finding out.  Once we got back to Andy’s place I had more wine, and possibly some bourbon.  Calms the nerves, don’t you know.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

The Writing on the Wall

Things are intense for me these days - work is in its apogee season, bargaining is starting up again and I have to find some actuaries for “our” side, I have a head cold and my weekend will be substantially taken up with going to services for the cool holidays (I skip the other ones, but RH and YK are like a sauna for the soul).  So here, to ward off my anxiety that anyone would visit the ‘hut and find nothing new under the sun of a given workday, here’s a few notes from my back-pocket notebook. 

Heeding the example of my biblical namesake, I like to read the writing on the wall - any wall - and sometimes it makes no more sense to me than it did to that other Daniel.  Read slowly, these have to last all day.

* Sign on the side of a worksite pickup truck: Shooter and Butts Landscape Contractors.  1) Sounds more like a plumber or maybe an outcall proctologist.  Given these two principals, almost any other name would have been better.  How about “Garden Party Landscape Architects?” “Brave New World?” “Open Trench?” Come on guys, if “Shooter and Butts” is the extent of your creative capacities, why would I want you deciding where to bed my lobelias?

* “Quickley Tapioca Drinks” has changed its name to “T & A Tapioca.” Now, I like tapioca as much as the next guy, if not more - I enjoy chewing my beverages, and fish eyes never tasted so good as when they’re floating in pureed watermelon and mango.  But T & A is a misnomer.  Everybody was fully dressed, and even the marischino cherries were covered up.  I feel ripped off. 

* Near T & A is one of my favorite shops, Kamei Housewares.  Shopping there recently for a cherrypitter and a melonballer (yes I did), I noticed their dingy cornflower-blue refuse pail behind the register, looking tired and dirty and overfull.  It’s got a crude but cute cartoon on it of two happy children on a patch of grass, big heads, big eyes, real insulin-shock stuff.  Above them appears the following: In large letters, “GOOD”; and below that, in smaller printing: “I love all beauteous things.  (/) I seek and adore them.” That’s a good lesson, trash can.  Live the dream. 

* And finally, for this morning anyway: a few days ago was “talk like a pirate” day, which I assiduously ignored, being the antisocial curmudgeon that I am.  However, despite my best intentions, I couldn’t help misreading a budget proposal for “Outsourced Private Attorney Assistance” as “Outsourced Pirate Attorney Assistance.” I have so many good ideas about how to make this work that it scares me.  Are these outsourced pirates, to help attorneys?  Or Pirate attorneys, outsourced to provide assistance?  Or maybe a plea for outsourced assistance for those overworked pirate attorneys?  Even when I get the words right, I can’t help but pronounce it mentally as “Outsourced private attorney arrrsistance.” I think this project deserves a site visit.  Hand me that parrot, will ya?

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Stretching the Bounds of Humor

I’ve started doing yoga in a class once a week, instead of just by myself in my own little studio.  It’s fun and I can really feel the impact of each class for days afterwards.  However, I can’t seem to “empty my mind.” Even when I’m contorted uncomfortably, telling myself that my own breath is the only worthy focus of my concentration, my brain is goofing off.  Two shameful examples, which might not make much sense to folk who don’t know their asanas from their elbows:

* They’re telling us that we’re doing hatha yoga.  Well, I can’t do everything that everybody else is doing - I have no balance, only midrange flexibility.  What the hell, I rationalize, I’ll do what I can.  Hatha yoga is better than none.

* I’m remembering that yoga is a lifestyle, and that lifestyle includes vegetarianism.  But I’ve been on a modified Atkins diet for a while and meat is a big part of my life these days.  As I settle into a strong pose and feel the prana course through the soles of my feet and up my legs, I wonder what’s for supper.  Maybe a burrito.  This pose makes me hungry for meat.  It’s the carne asana. 

There are more, even worse, miscarriages of language that occur to me when I’m in the yoga class, which I will not impose on you.  But maybe I need to take up a less contemplative form of fitness.  Jazzercizers probably don’t feel like they need to slap themselves for thinking up dumb Bob Fosse jokes during their sessions.  Then again, I would probably make everybody else laugh by my antics, like screwing up and falling over.  Maybe it’s better to enjoy a private joke than to become a public one.

Monday, September 22, 2003

Getting Carded

Personal identity is a tricky thing.  I’d like to think that I have a handle on who I am, but in a pinch, if I lose track somehow, I could just check my wallet and all the details would fall into place: I’m a penurious inactive attorney licensed to drive passenger vehicles in California (corrective lenses), who has health insurance and a membership in the Presidio YMCA and who shops at three different supermarket chains.  But for those times when the foregoing doesn’t help me figure out who I really am, I maintain a running file of supplementary background data - a sort of longitudinal review of who I’ve been over the years.  And by “running file” I mean the bottom of my underware drawer, where my old ID cards are scattered around beneath my various unmentionables and headrags.  So on those occasions when I choose to heed the ancient dictum “semper ube sububes,” I sometimes find myself confronted with glaring evidence of past lives and of selves who have ceased to be or who have been absorbed into an ostensibly higher, more evolved self.  They peek at me from under the boxer briefs.  And now I’m going to peek back. 

The most benign of these are the “non-face” cards - those without a photo.  My bar membership cards from ‘97 (brown print) and ‘98 (blue print, pasteboard card) are both stamped “active,” I’ve lost ‘99 and ‘01 but 2000 (tan) and 2002 (blue again) both read “inactive.” I can use them to track my growth from being a litigator to being a person.  They’re followed by an old leftover business card from my tenure as a development officer - it must have been from ‘98 because it’s for the Oakland - not the “East Bay” - SPCA; it also recalls to my mind one reason why I left that sinecure: there’s no card for me as “Campaign Director.” Even though I spent 14 months in that slot I never got even that modest gesture of recognition.  Then there’s my old Blue Cross card from when Kel’s insurance was cheaper than my own, and an old library card (undated but less than 10 years old); a membership card for Le Video, where I always wish I’d gone whenever I’m at Ballbuster but where I never actually go; and of course my personal favorite non-face card: the social security card I got in the fourth grade, laminated at a post office and trimmed with the kitchen scissors.  My signature on it is thick and clumsy, each letter painstakingly enscribed in the painfully uncoordinated script of my early youth.  It’s my oldest card, and it does really take me back to see my writing from so long ago.  Everything was such an effort in those days - even signing my name. 

Then there are the face cards.  They’re more fun, or sometimes scarier - but they definitely have more to tell me.

Sunday, September 21, 2003

Clubbin’ It

(Saturday Afternoon, late, gilded by the sun’s decline)

Ooh, my butt.  My butt is in ecstasy.  My sacrum is delighted.  My flesh rejoices in the feeling, the firmness, the rich meaty odor of new leather.  I am sitting, for the first time, in the Nana Chair. 

When my grandfather died last year we chose to memorialize him with heirloom furniture, something that would never go out of style and would always provide pure comfort and support.  It’s not like those are traits Jerome himself necessarily personified, but when you needed him he was there, and we wanted to accentuate the best of our memories of him.  The mission rocker with leather seat and back has never been less than a delight, to the eye and to the tuchus.  It’s sitting right across from me now, as if it’s checking out the new kid.  (Though we used Joy Challenger money to buy it, it was Jerry’s memory that it was bought to preserve.)

The new kid came to us as our parallel rememberance for Nana, who died earlier this year.  To keep her memory with us on a daily basis, we dipped into our share of her estate to get a leather club chair, slung low and generously upholstered, wide arms curved gracefully and stitched on the sides in a pattern echoing the cool contours of the overall design.  We searched for many months before we found the right chair, and I can’t find an image on line that comes close to it so you’ll have to use your imagination.  It calls to my mind an old Packard with pendulous fenders, the objectification of practical sophistication.  A sewn-in back cushion boosts me as I sit, relaxing my spine and improving my posture. The chair fits neatly next to the entertainment cabinet, under the tangka where the final piece of “old us” furniture used to live.  The tired old chair that the Nana chair replaces had been left behind at an apartment to which a friend was moving, and we’d taken it despite being its clunky, heavy, ugly and uncomfortable - because we didn’t have anything better and we needed something on which to sit.  At that time our decoration also included a couple of “found” couches, some pressboard shelves for the TV and stereo, and a generally unfocused miscellany of themeless, vapid, tired furniture. 

Those days are now utterly over.  The old chair awaits large item pick-up day, serving out its remaining tenure as a piece of pet furniture in the study.  The living room is now profoundly comfortable, with strong mid-century/mission/japonesque sensibilities.  As I sit here, the cushions warming up under me, bolstering me, my mojito sweating deliciously in its gracefully curved glass, I must call to mind the best qualities of my grandmother, a woman of extraordinary sophistication and style.  Thanks, Nana.  You bought us one sweet seat.

Friday, September 19, 2003

Here’s to Absent Hosts

Last sunday we had friends over for brunch and lunch.  The house was full of people and food and music, and as is typical of me at such times, I was a little hyper.  After all, there were souflees to bake, yuca to fry, carnitas to shred and a dutch oven in which it had been cooked to be deglazed for the gravy, bean salad and fruit salad and oh goodness so many other details to attend to - so when someone thrust a packet of photos into my hand I went through them rather perfunctorily.  Nice photos of several of my friends at my house; their babies were cute, the house looked great… I didn’t even notice that neither Kel nor I appeared in any of the pictures.  It was hours later that I got a second look and the whole story: we had left for LA to visit my parents.  Nool and Deb were visiting from the Windy Apple; Dave and Kimmela had been recruited to visit our diabetic cat and poke her with needles, and Andy and Heidi were in town for the evening from the wilds of upper east Berkeley.  Everybody came to our place and hung out for an hour or so, the three under-three-year-old girls trying to play with Rufus, our breathtakingly passive cat, the adults testing our couches for softness, hidden doors and secret treasure.  From the photos, everybody had a great time - even Rufus. It was a cozy little party, and I hadn’t just missed it - I hadn’t lifted a finger to make it happen.

It’s nice to realize that you can host a decent party from 500 miles away.  It’s just a little weird to discover that it’s happened after the fact, when I’ve got a house full of 25 friends on whose behalf I’d utterly exhausted myself in preparing for another party.  Maybe next time I should send out invitations and just leave town.  It looks like people would enjoy themselves anyway and I wouldn’t have so many slices in my thumb from the mandoline.

Ever Feel - Not So Fresh?

This didn’t happen. I didn’t play either part in this little dialogue.  And the foregoing is not a denial, implying any form of supplyial. You’re going to have to trust me on that one.  The bus is a weird and wonderful place, but sometimes I make stuff up about it anyway.

* Excuse me - do you smell something?
* I don’t smell anything.
* It’s like garlic and flowers, but sour.  And cumin.
* Sour flowers?  When did you notice it?
* Just a few minutes ago.  And sharp spice, like garlic.
* Is it very strong?
* No, not very.  But a couple of times it’s gotten more intense.
* But just in the last few minutes or so.
* Yes.  I’m pretty sensitive to smells so maybe you don’t notice it.  But when it kicks up its pretty strong.
* I see.  I think I know what you’re smelling.
* Oh god.  Oh no.  I’m so sorry.
* I am too.  I’m going to get off at this next stop, if you’d excuse me.
* I - I don’t know what to say.  It’s not that bad.  I’m just oversensitive. I’m sure no one else noticed.
* No one else has to.  Please let me past you.
* Of course. I can’t believe I was so thoughtless.
* No, no, it’s me.  Have a good day.
* You too.  Oh - while you’re there - could you open that window a crack?

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

I don’t often get particularly interesting spam but this email captured my interest.  For $30 plus shipping and handling I can buy an acre on the MOON? “The Lunar Embassy has been selling land on the Moon for the past 22 years. They are the THE ONLY COMPANY in the world to possess a legal basis and copyright for the sale of lunar, and other extraterrestrial property within the confines of our solar system. LunarLandRush.com is an authorized agent of the Lunar Embassy.” And on they go, freely referencing how many ex-Presidents, NASA officials, and actors from various Star Trek series have ponied up and gotten their piece of the lunar action. How could I go wrong? 

Well, in a couple ways, I guess.  First, even though the Lunar Embassy claims to be the “only company in the world” to have the right to make these sales, we’re already breaching terrestrial bounds here - how do I know that there aren’t beings on other planets or moons already buying up parcels on the ol’ skycheese?  It’s not like they’ll be checking with the Centaureans to make sure there’s no conflict in the title records, and I sure don’t want to be stuck in deed priority litigation with some freaky tentacled alien - especially not one from space. 

Second, I am not clear what copyright has to do with real property sales.  That’s for intellectual property.  Unless the moon is a figment of my feverish imagination, the reference to copyright raises troubling issues.  You shouldn’t bring it up if it’s not relevant, and I can’t see how it is relevant, so I wish no one had mentioned it.  Don’t confuse me with technicalities when I’m buying extraterrestrial acreage. 

But the biggest problem here is the selling price.  Thirty dollars is not an excessive investment - I can see how that might be absorbed, even amortized over a relatively short period of time (geologically speaking).  But they tacked on three extra words that should cool even the hottest-blooded lunatic - “shipping and handling.” What do you think S&H will run on a package being sent from the “Lunar Embassy?” It costs billions to send a shuttle from the moon to hereabouts; the packaging alone will probably cost a fortune.  I’m not ready to make any purchase where the incidental costs run so steeply. 

This whole idea is making me nervous.  But at least the guys from STNG have their own place to party up in the sky - and they’ll be able to pick up the documents right there on the lunar surface and save the shipping and handling charges.  Man, those guys get all the luck.  I mean, except for those dorky outfits they wear.  Those jumpsuits?  No wonder they want to buy the moon.  They can’t flash their own.

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

LUCKY DOG - third snippet

These little snippets have been surprisingly popular.  Admittedly, they’re only popular with a very small number of people, but I’m best with the very small numbers so I’ll just slap this one up here and let you confront the continuing saga of LUCKY DOG, EXERPT THE THIRD:

INT POLICE STATION – DAY

Flange sits with his bags at a cop’s desk, giving information for a report. 

FLANGE
That’s all there is to it.  The deed he gave me has his name as Solo Basura, but he called himself Gypsy to me.  I met him today, he cursed me, gave me everything he had, walked out of the alley and got creamed by a bus. 

COP
Yeah, go over the “gave you everything he had” part again.

FLANGE
I don’t really understand that part either.  He just said that he wanted to curse me, and that his stuff was cursed, so he could give it to me and leave me with his bad luck.

COP
And then he got creamed by a bus.

FLANGE
Yep.

Monday, September 15, 2003

Fracturversary

It was a year ago yesterday that I fell from a very slow-moving bicycle and broke my wrist badly enough to turn a cop’s stomach.  Yesterday I cooked breakfast and lunch for the people who got me through it.  That means that two days ago I carried the ingredients upstairs and chopped and stirred and prepared them.  That means I’m done with recovery.  I’ve been rebuilt - better, faster, stronger.  Naturally, all this drove me to tortured versification.  To wit:

A triumph of the masses
it’s so utterly behind me
what was once completely broken
is now stronger than before
Didn’t even lose my glasses
How’d those zebras know to find me
As I meditate aloft in crow and
firmly shut the door.

One year of mending later
with the help of friends and fortune
I don’t think about the hardware
or the damage that was done
I am now a celebrator
all has come to an accord, u
-niquely in the form of scars where
what was shattered now is one. 

At least I know Pea will like it because I mention scars.  But they’re pretty cool scars.  I’m grateful to each of you who was my correspondent during my recovery, imaginary friends and otherwise.  Your interest and concern helped me a lot.  And now, I’m ready to move on.

Documentary Day

I recently got to see two truly epochal films, ones that are invariably mentioned in the same breath because of their manifest thematic similarities and interconnected plots.  I refer, of course, to Frida and American Pimp.  I enjoyed both films.  I was relieved that Frida spoke english so fluently, as most of her mexican compatriots tend toward local dialect.  It was also good to see that Tony Banderas is actually so engaged in political activism.  The film was visually striking and I enjoyed the blending of VH-1 sensibilities and Hollywood filmic traditions, as in the way some scene segues or songs were dis-integrated from the story so as to create surreal breaks from reality.  In the end, however, I never got a sense of true pain from Hayek, and that detracted from my sympathy for the epynomous character.  Ultimately though, the film was saved by the introduction of one of the cleverest and most useful domestic laborsavers I’ve ever encountered, and I am expecting every household in the US to jump immediately on the laundry-monkey bandwagon.  What an important advance in the domestic sciences.  I can’t now stop thinking of things for which a monkey would be handy.  Updates to follow, pending clinical trials.

American Pimp was, sadly, actually filmed in local dialect, without the handy “english-language subtitles” option that has proved so valuable in films such as Sexy Beast, The Harder They Fall and My Brother Vinnie.  Instead, I had to listen very carefully to people as they spoke quickly through gold-plated diamond studded teeth about macks, hoes, and smacking people around.  It was a fascinating movie, ultimately showing me that truly stupid people can be attracted to a man based purely on the enormity of the hat he wears.  At one point an interviewee discusses his new line of work, post-pimping, as a blues singers, telling us, “I’m now singing the blues.  But blues singers and players have a lot in common.  We look the same, we dress the same - so it was a good transition for me.” Up next, the snakeskin-sombrero’d stylings of Howlin’ Wolf and his fine bitches.  Adds a whole new dimension to “making it big in show bidness.” It was also entertaining for me to see so many young lions of the flesh-peddling profession giving respect to a hometown hero, Fillmore Slim, an elderly dapper man with 50 years of pimping under his belt and an impenetrable slur.  “I been flefshiming since mnolomgsoro” he intones with a wry smile, and you figure you just have to smile back and nod or you won’t be cool.  Of course, this avatar of pimpdom is patrolling his turf, through which I ride on the bus every day to work - the Gazebo smoke shop, the Century Theater and Video Arcade, the public toilet that is Jones Street at O’Farrell… It was both enormously entertaining and a little sad to see the world some people make for themselves. 

I couldn’t watch both movies back-to-back, that would have been too intense - so I multitasked and enjoyed them simultaneously via picture-in-picture.  I saved so much time I get to tack another 45 minutes onto the end of my life.  I just need someone to remind me when that happens.  As a final reflection, I leave you with the words I found when gassing up my car over the weekend on a small paper sign taped to the pumps at a cut-rate gas station: “Come and See Us at the Booth for All Your Snacking Needs.” Just replace “booth” with “Chucklehut” and “Time-Frittering” for “Snacking.” Mmmm, time fritters.  I can almost taste the procrastination.

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Dangling Dan - A Risk-Adverse Guy

When I broke my wrist, and before the doctors in the ER set it, they hung my hand by the fingers from a set of metal mesh cages.  They crammed each finger and my thumb into a stiff tight tube made of loosly braided strands of wire, which in turn were hanging from strings tied to a stationary horizontal metal rod - and I quietly hung there for a while with a twenty-pound weight dangling from my elbow.  The name they used for this device was “Chinese Finger Traps.” Even in my extreme discomfort and with all the painkillers they’d (eventually) fed into me, I wondered about that name.  It seemed a little insensitive to the chinese people. 

Three weeks or so later I was at my orthopod’s office for a followup.  He’s a typical sawbones - hulking and blonde. He also had another person in the room - another doctor, or an intern?  Medical assistant? Physical therapist?  I was sore and missed some of the details.  But one thing I did notice was that this person was a woman of asian ancestry.  The fact was of no consequence to me at the time. 

She asked me about my treatment in the ER, and I described the mesh traps I’d endured.  I didn’t want to call them the name I’d heard used for them - they’d taken off my cast, my misshapen purple lump of an arm was exposed and unbelieveably tender, and I didn’t want to offend someone who could so easily cause me so much pain.

“Oh, the Chinese Finger Traps,” she said brightly.  I guess I I looked surprised to hear her say it.  “Sure, we use those all the time.  That’s why they hired me - for the whole chinese thing.”

I was still glad I hadn’t mentioned it myself.  Some people will surprise you and some of them won’t.

Weiner

I may not have been born ready - but I was weaned ready.

Sex With Someone I Love

Having spent so much time writing up answers to five simple questions (see below) from Jules over the past few days, I find myself with a new question on my hands: Who the hell cares?  I can’t shake the feeling that this whole interview thing I’ve plastered up here for the world to read is nothing but onanism, and the seed of my words is prolifically, prodigously spilled on the ground of cyberspace.  Looking back over that post, now that it’s formatted and edited and cleaned up just the way I wanted it, I feel overwhelmingly petty and boring.  The experience leads me, naturally, to the sacrifice of even more words:

Inquiring of my deeper self again
if we are almost ready to proceed,
I hover with the page beneath my pen
and cogitate a self-indulgent screed.
The power of the press I weild anon,
which, as possessor, I’m obliged to use -
so bend my wit like a chameleon
and beat the language to a bloody bruise.
My rants and links I jettison at will;
with crafty egotism I inveigh;
put me near a can of worms and it will spill,
shout louder when there’s nothing much to say.
I blog because I want the world to see
that nothing is less newsworthy than me.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Interview with the Man Who Wouldn’t Shut Up

It’s not like I can watch you suckers all jumping off bridges and not hop the railing myself.  It’s not in my nature.  Plus, I don’t even close my blinds when I change clothes, so why should I shrink from exposing myself to you, my dreamlike and incorporeal public?  Well only because I’m so deathly dull and have nothing of value to tell the world - but that’s never stopped me before and it’s sure as hell not going to stop me now.  So here’s what I did: I watched most of my imaginary friends answer five different provocative questions each, and then I waited for a while, and it seemed like the coast was clear, so I asked Jules to interview me and here are her questions and my answers.  And for the record, she got the questions to me toot sweet but I have dawdled over my answers because they were not sufficiently ponderous and overworked.  Hope you enjoy, and remember, this is a non-smoking flight.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Well Code Me Pink

This program seems to have been floated some time ago but I’m just getting around to being outraged by it.  The idea seems to be that we should rate and rank our citizens by how much of a risk they seem to be to blow up an airplane.  If our review of their credit history, employment history, and arrest record are sufficiently alarming, they will be grounded, prohibited entry onto a common carrier regardless of the fact that they’re carrying no weapons and pose no actual risk.  We’re using sloppy shortcuts instead of actual El Al style vigilance, and the victim is our civil rights. 

It reminds me of the fatuous blowhard who was expounding to a few tourists behind me in line for the screenings at the airport last year; he was opining that the TSA should use him to select people for secondary screenings, and not subject little children and old ladies to this indignity (and waste everyone elses’ time while they’re at it).  “I’ve never seen a Norwegian terrorist,” he chortled at his sheep-faced audience.  I turned to him and asked, “If you saw three middleeastern shopkeepers and Tim McVeigh, who would you pick to search?  I consider domestic terrorists as dangerous as foreign ones, myself.” He had nothing more to say on the subject for the remainder of our wait in line. 

Then we have stories like this.  That little bastard’s a code orange - good thing he’s got great credit or he’d have missed his flight…

Sokkittome

I’m taking pages today out of two of my favorite books (figuratively speaking).  On one hand, a good on-line friend sent a semi-private email which reached me as well as about 90 other people on Friendster last week, reflecting on that organization’s suggestion that he “tell people what he’s looking for.” He therefore asked for help locating his “nice socks.” Well that certainly resonated with me, as I’ve lost so many nice sox that I’ve taken to just drawing an argyle pattern on my ankles with multicolored sharpies.  There are, however, a lot of things in my sock drawers that aren’t socks, and sometimes they keep me from finding what I’m looking for. 

Then Jules came along with a stunning and poetic post yesterday cataloguing the contents of her keepsake box.  Well I was about ready to catalogue my sock drawers anyway, but now I feel that I have to do so - but with full recognition that Jules has kicked my ass and my random crap doesn’t rise to the level of a keepsake even if you melt it all together and put it in a nice heart-shaped box.  But whatever.  I’m a free spirit.

I have two sock drawers, each of which contains several non-sock items.  These are:
ATHLETIC SOCK DRAWER:
* Five empty film cannisters
* Shiny purple bat necklace
* Pumpkin-n-beads plastic elastic bracelet
* Partial roll of shrinky ace bandage (1/3")
* A pair of orthotics that need to be reglued
* Green plastic fake fingertip with long red nail
* Two packs of spare buttons for random shirts
* Last year’s bar card
* Shell necklace from Hawaii
* Rubber gaskets for sandals or hydropack (not sure which)

BUSINESS SOCKS
* Box and invoice from latest refill of Nasacort rx
* Tieclip in a little velvet box
* Instructions on tying ties (including bow ties)
* Ugly glasses for vigorous outdoor activity, in ugly case (or, in case of ugly)
* Shoelaces (27”, dress, black)
* Photo-holder portion of an old wallet (empty and never used)
* Two photos from schneckenbaking party last year
* Brochure from Fanny’s Calistoga B&B, with several old college photos of friends inside
* More stretchy ace wrap (1/2” roll)
* Stub from Bob Dylan/Phil Lesh Concert 6/23/00 (Concord Pavillion)
* Two medallion coins in cardboard and plastic wrap commemorating Orlando Cepeda’s entry into the Hall of Fame, distributed at Candlestick Park 7/11/99
* White pin-on button reading “Parade Marshal / U of P”

What I didn’t find were my damn nice socks.  I did a little tidying though, while I was poking around in my drawers.  (heh.) As Kel recently said, I did a half-assed job of cleaning, but that’s half an ass cleaner than things were before.

MORAL: Oh give up.  If you’re looking for your morals in my sock drawer, we’re both in trouble.

Monday, September 08, 2003

The Savvy Shopper

Sometimes you need to be sensitized to things before you can deal with them appropriately, whether in a positive or a negative way.  But when you head is ready for reality, things can be surprisingly clear.  This was proven to me in that bastion of philosophic renewal, Macy’s.  Let’s delve, shall we?

I’ve been thinking about buying shirts since Greg subjected that process to his unflinching scrutiny late last week.  In particular, I was thinking that I don’t like to buy shirts, but I do like to own nice shirts and I’ve had to dispose of a few old favorites lately.  And then I suddenly found myself at the mall being directed by my most sophisticated and efficient wife to a really drastic sale at Macy’s where I had an atypical reaction to a shirt.  First, there was only one on the rack but it was, incredibly, the right size.  I liked the color; the pattern was subtle, undulating, flattering.  The fabric had a soft ribbed nap that felt illicitly good everywhere it touched me.  40% off, and, even under the diffuse florescent lighting of the probadoras, it made my eyes seem more intensely azure.  (That’s right, azure.  Not just blue.  Blue is for everybody.  Azure is for Chuckles.) The lines drape generously over my chestal region; the garment is equally comfortable in all modeling postures (waving to distant friends, throwing an invisible beach ball overhead, pulling an imaginary rope...) Very rarely have I been so excited about an article of clothing.  But had I not been primed by prior exposure to an appropriate role model to confront my inherent reluctance to buy anything, I might have left it behind anyway and then regretted it for months thereafter.  Not this time.  It’s hanging in the closet and I can sneak over and caress it furtively whenever I wish.  I am a better (and significantly hipper) person - not for having bought it, but for having let myself buy it.  Thanks, Greg, for preparing me for this critical experience of personal growth and fashion. 

However, before I had completed my purchase, I did see something disturbing.  A family - dad: stocky, not tall, olive skin, golf shirt, livid with rage; mom: 40’s, quiet, tense, angry too but more in control; two young girls, maybe 10 and 12 years old, silent and cowering.  Dad is shouting at the older girl in a foreign language - hebrew?  Arabic?  I get an Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanese vibe from the family, a general central-mid-east feeling.  But that’s not the point; the point is that Dad is shouting at his daughter, right in her face, and the only words I recognize are “stupid” and “idiot.” She’s holding her hands around her waist, looking up at him with wide eyes.  As he berates her, he pulls back and smacks her in the back of the head with the flat of his hand.  The sound is a dull flat counterpoint to the cheerful ambient shopping soundtrack being piped in.  The girl maintains silence as her head rocks forward and her hair flies up around the force of the blow.  This is all happening about 25 feet from me and I walk over.  “Sir,” I tell him in my gravest voice (I’m wearing a silly t-shirt and ragged old shorts, but I am cleanshaven, deepvoiced, and taller than he is), “Sir, if you are going to treat a child that way in public you should expect to hear that people disapprove of it.  You should never hit a child.” He wheels on me, his anger a tangible aura around him but not so much as raising a finger to me. “It’s none of your business!,” he repeates over and again.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!  None of your business!” At one point the wife chimes in, adding “ You don’t understand.  We didn’t know where she was.” As she offers this explanation, dad is already dragging the family deeper into the store and away from me.  I haven’t said a word since my first expression of disapproval.  But as they shrink into the maze of merchandise and people, I call after him, in a resonant but not loud voice, “Children should not be hit.” He shouts back over his shoulder, “Of course not!”

Kel asked me afterwards if I’d been too antagonistic in my approach to this situation - if my tone and words might have exacerbated this man’s anger, anger he’d just take out on his daughter later when I couldn’t see or intervene.  And in retrospect I wish I’d been less confrontational, but it was only because I had been driven to extreme agitation by the abuse I was seeing that I got involved in the first place.  I’m glad I stepped in even if it might have made things worse in the short term for that little girl.  At the very least I wanted her and her sister to know that some of us don’t think that’s the way the world should work. 

MORAL: When something is very right or very wrong you can feel it in your bones - and you’d better do something about it or you’ll spend a long time wishing you had.

Friday, September 05, 2003

Pastiche

A sense of letting go
unowing
resurfacing my past in all its
surplussage and wastefulness
box after dusty cardboard box
This one’s got ten years of banking
going back so far it’s like
a fiscal Olduvai, recording
lives once lived and since, repressed:
crises, parties, poverties,
so many choices every day
each minute full as they are now
reality was likewise dense
and I was fretful, poor of spirit,
callow, prideful, heedless, weak -
this box is all our household records
three year’s worth and twelve years old
I smell the tension in the paper
filed compulsively, forgotten,
blinking in the light of day
I read my failings in my checkbook
trace my lifeline through my archives
handle every sheet and staple
drop them though the narrow slot
and hear the engine whir as tinsel
fills the bin beneath the rotors
the sound of history erasing
triumphs, tragedies alike
and with each bag of shredded paper
each old box that I dispose of
I regain that share of spirit
feel my archived energy
returning to me, rather musty,
needing some reintegration
nonetheless a prodigal
homecoming of recycled mojo

Having hauled the bags of shred
downstairs to bins two flights below
I run back up at doublespeed
and take the steps two at a time
triumphant in rejuvenation

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Losing Face

This one gets a little disturbing.  Just so you know what to expect when you read it over lunch.

Let’s talk about courage.  There’s lots of kinds of courage, ways of confronting that which by all rights should have you cowering under the sheets, breathing used air because you know it’s safe.  I hear about acts of extraordinary courage every day.  There are soldiers enmired in hopeless wars, facing snipers and landmines, getting picked off one at a time but still answering reveille at dawn and facing the music.  There are the survivors of domestic violence who must work to make up for the child support they’ll never see, fully expecting that their batterers will show up at their job at any moment to get them fired and then to assault them anew - yet they go to work anyway, choking back their fear.  There are children who aren’t safe at schools that can’t teach them, much less protect them - and still they brave the streets of their cities and the hallways of their academies because it is the only way, their only hope.  Courage abounds.  The world is too, too full of people overcoming grave danger, petrifying fear, impossible odds.  Their stories start to blend together into a haze of the possible-yet-incredible.  I start to wonder if my life has room in it for that kind of strength of character.

Then there’s the man who is losing his face.  I see him every week or so on the bus.  He wears clothes and carries a satchel and combs his hair like everybody else; he has two hands and two legs and doesn’t take the seats that are reserved for the elderly and disabled.  Something about him is wrong, though.  It’s centered on the bridge of his nose, or where the bridge of his nose should be.  It’s like a hole, or a deep abrasion, or an enormous scab.  Really, it’s like all three of those at once.  It goes halfway across either cheek, down to his upper lip, and laps at his eyebrows so it’s hard to tell where his eyes even are anymore.  It is wrinkled and corrupted, and not very dry.  I don’t know if he puts something on it or if it simply seeps a milky substance, but his raw open flesh looks wet and glistens.  He is gruesome almost beyond my ability to bear his presence.  From the side, it seems that a big chunk of his face has simply been eaten away.  Little kids literally scream and run from him.  Everybody who sees him evinces the universal shock evoked by disfigurement.  He looks like meat.  Rotting meat.

This man gets up in the morning, dresses, packs himself a lunch and walks to his front door.  Does he check a mirror?  Does he avoid looking at himself?  Does he think of himself as he is, or as he may once have been - with regular features and a face that blended into the crowd?  I don’t know.  All I know about him is that he lives with what he looks like every day, having disgust and horror meet his gaze wherever he turns.  Yet he opens his door and walks out into the world anyway.  He makes himself keep going, braving our revulsion.  One could say that he goes on because he has no choice - but he does have a choice, albeit a final and permanent one. Yet he hasn’t taken that option.  He goes out and goes on, the sun warming his back, music lifting his soul.  He has pleasures - I hope, pain and fear - I doubt not, and loneliness - I must imagine. But he neither gives in nor gives up.  When I see him I must turn away so as not to gawk at his hideousness, but as I do so I admire him terribly.  His strength and courage are an example to me which I cannot emulate but to which I nonetheless aspire.  Courage can be as simple sometimes as walking out your front door with your face, or what is left of it, on your head.

Sign Language

Signage is one of my favorite -ages.  From “Yield” to “Peligro - Biocontanamica,” signs tell us so many wonderful and exciting things.  And I am fortunate to live in a city that is proud of its history and its architecture, so there are quite a few plaques and signs up around downtown and the neighboring districts for my perusing pleasure.  There are plaques marking the site of old opera houses, the first state fair, the Barbary Coast trail tour, even brass plates in the sidewalk telling you the names of the ships buried in landfill under your feet. 

If I see a historical marker, I’m enough of a geek to stop and read it.  “Oh, so this is where the old Jesuit infirmary stood.” “Oh, so this is where Steve McQueen caught air in Bullitt.” “Oh, so this is a seventy-year-old advertisement for laxitives.  Neat.”

Two of my favorite plaques are across the street from each other where Bush and First both terminate at Market, a wide and messy intersection featuring the city’s finest example of pure modernist architecture.  Next to that soaring edifice, on a sliver of a traffic island, is a low plinth with a plaque marking the erstwhile site of a major slot machine factory in the 1800s.  And on the other side of Market, set into the sidewalk at the corner of First, is a plaque stating that the original shoreline of the city used to be 25 feet to the north-east - now, a heavily-trafficked transit corridor.  The sea, the slots - all gone, long gone now from there.  All that remains are the plaques - and the dorkballs like me who trip people up by standing still in traffic to read them. 

Many tourists take photos of themselves with plaques, usually from a sufficient distance that the plaque cannot be read.  So if you didn’t jot down some notes, all you’ll be able to say when you show off the photos is “That’s me at the bronze plaque where they arrested Ginsberg after he read Howl, or where the Federal Mint got blown up, or where the world’s oldest chinese-italian restaurant is.  Hard to tell.  But it was highly memorable.  Hence the plaque.”

Hence, indeed.  These poor benighted fools need some historical markers that are worth remembering, so when the photos come back they can remember instantly, forever, why that spot merited a snapshot.  As a public service (for I am nothing if not embarassingly public), I hereby suggest that plaques commemorating the following high-value cultural artifacts and accomplishments be cast in bronze and mounted on random edifices downtown:

* Buddhism Founded, 700 bce (Tuesday March 4) - Get Serene!
* Golem Loosed Upon City From This Location In 1853; Only the Righteous Survived
* Yalta Conference (Dress Rehearsal), 1944
* S.L. Clemens Here Coined the Word “Hella,” 1888
* America’s First $5 Latte, 1991
* “Tastes Like Chicken” First Applied to Non-Poultry Foodstuff, 1869
* MYSTERY PLAQUE: Something Really Cool Happened Here A Long Time Ago But We Can’t Tell You What
* If Napoleon Weren’t French, He’d Have Been Buried Here
* Site of WeinerTown and the WeinerTown Ball: 1893-1931
* Underware Purposely Exposed Over Waistline of Pants as Fashion Statement for First Time: 1984
* At This Site, Four Out of Five Dentists Chose Dentyne (for their patients who chew gum): 1977
* Look Out!  Behind You!

Thanks for your cooperation and support in this matter.  I will look forward to seeing pretentiously brazen signage and befuddled tourists around downtown, starting forthwith.  And for god’s sake don’t ask me for directions.  You’ll hear crap about this town even I don’t know where it came from.

Monday, September 01, 2003

Philo Style

Written Sunday 6:30 pm:

The neighbors are screaming at each other again.  I think she’s thrown him out, and he’s hollering a blue streak at her; she’s shredding the air with her screech of a response.  Luckily, they’re jays, hopping from beech tree to laurel to oak, two actual blue streaks, and their cries seem entirely proper and welcome.  I’m lying in a hammock strung between two kindly pines, shaded by heavy boughs from the sun as it drops toward the horizon, gently swaying in the early evening breeze that rolls in from the sea twenty or so miles to the northwest.  Kel is about forty feet away up on the deck with a fluffy magazine, having tired of her schoolwork; Wes Montgomery is playing on the stereo inside and a note or two occasionally reach me at my idyll looking across the long narrow valley.  Cos is wandering the area between us, a goofy smile on his enormous face, sniffing a million unimaginable stinks and scents. 

A few snapshots from the trip, developed instantly: on our last visit here it was mid-spring and the dominant theme in the landscape was flowers - an astonishing, eyepopping variety and profusion everywhere and anywhere.  Now, in late summer, the theme is fruit - apple orchards not only bent double with ripening fruit but redolent of it too; peach trees hiding ruby bounty, budding prizes even more succulent for being so well concealed (I felt almost perverse when I stooped to enter under the leafy branches and touch the clustered, downy delicacies); brambles of blackberries choking the shoulders of the highway, pressing up against the windows of restaurants, tumbling madly down hillsides, and all spangled with every phase of the berry, from flowers to nubbins to greenfruit to black juicy fantasies, each drupe thick with syrup and glistening in the broiling sun (and set off perfectly by firey poison oakleaves that stayed my hungry fingers); and of course the grapes, everywhere, on steel wires and weathered wood arbors, covering whole hillsides, the leafy greenness of the vines complimenting innumerable heavy dusty bunches of green and purple fruit… though the grass is dry, the earth’s bounty seems even more prolific than it did three months ago. 

And, on a related theme, roadkill.  So many animals left flattened on the highway - and so strangely many of them skunks, plus one vulture: undoubtedly he stooped to the tarmac to feast on a dead skunk (we could smell it) and, with the passing of a heedless and invincible vehicle, became a victim himself, a huge black wing stretched out across the roadbed… Kel even saw one skunk that had been painted over with a double yellow line when its corpse hadn’t been moved by a road crew.  It’s almost funny, but then you remember, it used to be his valley, not ours. 

Home from supper last night, up atop our lonely mountain, the moon was a pockmarked crescent resting in a plate of lighter darkness, and the milky way spilled from horizon to horizon with a terrible carelessness that just doesn’t translate down in our home in the city.  Mars, at a 60,000 year proximity, shone with a salmon passion, brighter than electricity, a steady spotlight 320,000 miles away.

After breakfast today, without detouring off the road back to our cabin, we stopped at three excellent and very beautiful wineries, tasted 15 or 20 wines, bought three bottles and a cookbook before we regained our self-control (that is, made it back to our little dirt turnoff into the hidden vales of the north side of the valley).  Later in the afternoon we drove down to a state park full of redwoods and sorrel and the Navarro River, now a shadow of it’s torrential winterfed aspect, a lazy creek across which I slowly strolled; the water was shallow and calm and very clear, cool and vibrant and life-affirming.  I can feel it lapping at my ankles even as I recline here now.  And on the way up the hill to the cabin afterwards, we stopped to let some quail cross the road, and then a few minutes later for turkeys who sprinted the oaken slopes with inspiring alacrity.  Delicious burritos from the local market for supper and now nothing to do but experience the evening as it slowly envelops the valley.  It is a pleasure to be alive. 

***

written Monday Night at home:
The drive back home was especially scenic; we went out of our way.  I’m really busy this week and I’ll catch up with you all when I can.  But I’m going to ride this weekend for every inch I can get out of it.