Sunday, January 30, 2005

How to Cram a Whole Week’s Worth of Fun into Two Days, with Bonus Homemade Marlborough Toffee

How can this whole weekend be fit into a little dinky blogpost?  It just can’t, but that has never stopped me from trying before, so here goes:

I did not get my passport last friday, but I’ve got my photos and Kel got hers and we’re ready to move on to the next phase soon.  My passport photos are are not being reproduced here for two reasons: 1) national security - we don’t want them falling into the wrong hands so some crazed Basque Nationalist can assume my identity and infiltrate our porous borders to make me look bad to my creditors and on cable television (or the internet(s)).  And more significantly, 2) in these particular photos, I look like a goddamn freak.  Since the photo is only shoulders-up, I think I rather look as if I had been photographed while on the toilet, too, but that’s probably just me.  Kel took one look at my photos and hooted with laughter, and then took on the pseudo-electronic voice of “space translator” to give my image self-expression: “I am Voltar, I am here to commit crimes, before I return to my home planet.” If I ever reach an international border I’m sure they’ll take one look at my shifty visage and welcome me with open arms, that will lead directly to a small and isolated cell.  Perhaps I can skate by on Kel’s photos which, as usual, are photogenically superior to mine. 

Waiting for me at home on Friday when I got back from work were six settings of Kel’s grandmother’s good silverplate flatware, which her mother kindly sent to from the old Shikshinny (Pennsylvania) home that’s she’s slowly breaking down.  The tablewear is pretty damn close to the sterling flatware I inherited from my grandparents, and the extra place settings will come in handy.  They even came with some very nice serving (or “servicing") pieces, and when you get down to it, one cannot have too many gravy ladles.  Euphemistic?  You tell me, Gravyboy McButterdish. 

Saturday I woke up as the dawn kissed our still-newly-painted walls, and dashed out the door to buy chocolate, evaporated milk, and butter, which I turned into mindblowing toffee in short order for to bring it to a birthday party we attended at Andy-n-Heidi’s house.  The centerpiece of this party was an endless and inexhaustable pile of awesome Chicago hotdogs, which Andy expertly grilled over hot coals while we ate a variety of gourmet salads and sucked down some freshly hand-cured toscana sausage made by one of the guests, who also happens to be the executive chef at one of the area’s finest restaurants - which, when the area is “the bay area,” means a lot.  He and Andy had also picked some grapes a few months ago, pressed them into wine in Andy’s basement, barrelled it for a few weeks and then brought in bottling equipment and put the juice down into bottles with a little yeast and sugar for a secondary fermentation… Andy uncorked a few bottles of this garage lambrusco for us; I found it lightly effervescent yet fullbodied, a perfect accompaniment to dogs slathered with kraut and carmelized onions with slow-cooked beans and corn salad on the side.  I ate till I was stupid (oh shut up) and then had a few cupcakes and some toffee to freshen up, and before I could stagger back to the winebar again I was ready for my third dog.  It was a delightful day and I fell asleep heavily and gloriously once I got home. 

Today we started with some positive domestic efforts, followed by me taking a very satisfying jog around Stow Lake.  We then scampered out to have a “brunch of discovery” with a friend from work who clearly knows a hell of a lot more about what to eat in my neighborhood than we do.  She took the bus in from Chinatown where she lives to meet us in front of Green Apple books, and then immediately fed us some wonderful viet sandwiches - one beef, one pork, both flavorful and crunchy and energizing, and of course, it was all at a place I’d walked past without noticing hundreds of times.  Our appetites whetted, she got us into the heavy stuff - at the little steamtable storefront across the street we sat down to lotus root, tofu, mushroom, and a plate of duck.  No, not that kind of duck - it was the most auspicious bits, the beaks and tongues, and the feet.  After this second course, we strolled through some markets to look for especially tasty and exotic produce, which we found (fresh water chestnuts!  green papaya!  balut!  (we took a rain check on the balut.)) Then up to California Street for a quick visit to an old Korean deli that was just opening up for the day, where they made us some korean sushi on the spot - $1.50 for twenty-count’em-twenty slices of delicious veggi roll, which we munched as we strolled back down to a dessert place on Clement that served us some of my longstanding favorite coconut milk drink with beans and gelatin noodles and fun stuff like that, plus some silken tofu in a sweet ginger sauce that really felt fun in my mouth and tasted great, and also some very counterintuitive but delicious baked yuca with coconut and sweet-salty nuts sprinkled over it; the frosting on this metaphorical cake was that the place was in the location that used to be the 6th Avenue Cheeseshop, which I hadn’t revisited for years. 

We also took a few moments at the local fish shop/aquarium to enjoy the mindblowing aquatic life rippling and surging around in innumerable saline tanks, and when we finally parted company I was full and very happy.  So happy, in fact, that I only had enough energy, once I got home, to plant my entire dorsal-posterior aspect on the big green couch and fall asleep for about two hours, at which juncture Kel woke me up so we could take a trip to North Beach (via a charming nearby coffee house) to visit an far-eastern knickknack shoppe and get ourselves a ranma - a carved wood panel we intend to hang over the bed once we upgrade to kingsize.  Unlike most of the ranma we see in our quotidian ranma peregrinations, of which I have plenty so just stow the ‘tude bro, this one is almost a work of nature, worn and non-representational, just woodgrain and
knotholes and the expression of the spirit of the wood.  We then tossed this 100 year old hunk of tree into the back of the conveniently-parked soob (two convenient parking spots on Washington Square Park on consecutive sundays - obviously my karma backwash has yet to catch up with me) and then we wandered down Columbus for a few pints at Vesuvio, which was as charming and accomodating as ever, and walked back slowly, picking out the spots where we need to visit next weekend, since these little trips are going so well.  (Ooh!  Brunch!  Ooh!  Deli!  Ooh!  Pastries - to hell with waiting for next weekend, let’s get some now!)

The drive back home along the marina was even more gorgeous than usual, with the sunset light casting deep shadows and bright highlights over the GG bridge.  Once we got home we found a message waiting for us - a dear friend inviting us to her house for an intimate superbowl transfat gorgefest and gigglrama next sunday, which we will surely attend.  Tonight’s supper was a little fortified miso soup, the rest of the Korean sushi, and our tasty italian baked goods, with a Futurama to wash it all down (and an Aquateen chaser, so it shouldn’t be a total loss).  Somewhere in the mix we even found time to tidy up the house, dust and vacuum, and get most of the laundry done.  And that new moisturizing lotion?  I’m soaking in it!  This was, evidently, exactly the weekend I needed, joyous and social, nap-addled and adventurous, productive and dissapated by turns.  Thanks for sharing it with me, even if only in retrospect.  In fact, I’m so glad you tagged along (and kept quiet during the moments of dramatic tension and the dirty bits) that I’m going to spill the beans and tell you a little more about that toffee I mentioned back up in paragraph four:

Friday, January 28, 2005

THE HARDER THEY COME, or, You Have A Friend In Cheeses

The stuff around that part of Clement Street wasn’t generally what anybody would call “classy” - a casket wholesaler, an irish bar, cheap housewares and cheaper clothes, a reconditioned bank that sold fire-damaged and bankrupt-company goods, a coffeehouse with a sign on the patio that said “No Spits”.... This area was low-key, comfortable, cheap - not unlike myself, though not quite as clean. 

One exception was little cheesehop just off the main drag, on 6th.  With its hand-painted sign and its windowfull of colorful tins and mysterious rounds and wedges, its quaint fenestered door and hand-hewn fixtures, it seemed to have been lifted out of another neighborhood, another country.  It smelled good in there - the kind of smell that would probably have been offensive anywhere else, but, there, signified the mystical combination of growth, decay, fermentation and arrest that ennobles simple milks and turns them into true works of craftmen’s art. 

The Sixth Avenue Cheeseshop (I could never think of that name without it singing itself in my head to the tune of a Springsteen song) was managed by a young woman with the sort of beauty and freshness that brightened days, deepened flavors, and uplifted spirits. She always had a ready smile and she really knew her cheese.  Upon entering, lungs filling with the sour bouquet of her wares and heart filling with the sweetness of her attentions, any patron would be assured of full satisfaction, whatever his or her cheesy needs may be.  The shop sold cheese, but wrapped it up in soul. 

I was there one afternoon to get a selection of fermented curds and fromageous comestibles for some little party or event we had upcoming.  When I arrived I saw that I was not the only patron in evidence - another gent, conservatively dressed and older than I, was already being serviced, so I busied myself among the exotic wares and eavesdropped discretely.  He wanted some hard cheese, a parmesian or asiago or some such, and he wanted it finely shredded.  She offered a recommendation; he approved; she cut and weighed out his selection, placed it in the heavy antique steel shredder, bestowed one of her priceless smiles on him, and flicked the switch. 

The one thing she hadn’t done was to press the heavy hinged steel plunger back down atop the cheese.  The powerful industrial motor leapt into action; the shredding blades spun and caught into the hard, friable block.  Instantly, the cheese, unrestrained, spun in the chute, lifted, was propelled up and out.  It flew across the intimate shop like an electrocuted cat, its whirling bulk describing a graceful arc from the shredder behind the rear counter to the floor near the front windows, where it slid, oily-slick and energized, under a low shelf.

The cheesemaid squealed; the distinguished patron gasped.  The cheese lay where it landed, catching its breath.  The shopkeep shut the shred motor, scurried over to redeem her goods.  She cut a new wedge for her customer, carefully ensured that it held its place in the shredder, ground it into savory bits and cashed him out.  He left, quarry in tow, and then it was my turn.  I don’t remember what cheese she sold me, but I do remember her telling me with a rueful grin, “You’ve got to be careful - those hard ones can really get away from you.”

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Freedom’s Just Another Word for the Bit Between Your Teeth

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this… but it’s been a week since I avoided listening to the inaugural speech, and slightly less time than that since I heard Jon Stewart lampooning it, and there’s a theme that has stuck in my head since then like a bad pop song you don’t quite know the lyrics to.  It’s the idea that this is a “free country,” and as such should be seen by the rest of the world as an exemplar of all that is fine and right.  As I recall the tally I saw on television (or the T-V, as some wags call it), Bush invoked “freedom” 27 times and “liberty” 15 times in a speech that celebrated the peaceful retention of incumbent power - a speech which I understand to have lasted 45 seconds, much of which time was dedicated to a musical number wherein he danced with an animated apple pie and a drugged monkey.  But I digress.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Street Seen

Today I will take you on a thrilling adventure.  You have all read of my endlessly fascinating DAILY BUS RIDE HOME FROM WORK.  But really, what’s the hoo-hah all about?  What do I see?  What’s out there?  What flashes past my windows, and winnows past my flashers?  I made it my business to find out: not long ago I gave up my habitual seat facing in on the left just before the articulation on the 38L, and took a seat on a single facing forward halfway back; I pulled out my writing pad and stared out the window.  I tried to write down as much of what I could see of the various physical features of each block I passed, and here’s what my notes tell me I saw:

Offices - newsstand - plaza - Baja Fresh - garage entry - plaza - Tully’s coffee - big office lobby - cellphone store

(Turn onto Market street:) Coffee - home fitness store - bank - plaza - coffee - newsstand - currency exchange

Offices - chocolate shop - bank - plaza - offices - plaza - McD’s - office building - Stacey’s Books - plaza - offices - flowers - travel agent - Commonwealth Club - Rand McNally store

Men’s Warehouse - office lobby - McD’s - Phone - Boudin Bakery cafe - ATM - offices

Fancy clothes - Palace Hotel - fancy clothes - eyeglasses - fancy clothes - Maxfield’s bar and restaurant - bakery - plaza - toys - phones - lobby of Monadnock building - cafe - Lenscrafters - vacant - phones

(Turn onto Geary street:) Washington Mutual (back of building) - back of big old building - Asian Arts gallery - lobby - cosmetics - Walgreens - kid’s clothes - currency exchange - building lobby - Guess

Swatch - cosmetics - Morrow Nut House - Neiman Marcus - some other fancy clothes store - Rotunda restaurant - Neiman Marcus with dome from City of Paris

Louis Vuitton at Macy’s - Macy’s - Salvatore Ferragamo at Macy’s - Macy’s - chandeliers - antiques - jewelry

Casual Corner*Petite Sophisticate - Lefty O’Doul’s restaurant and piano bar - Daily Grill restaurant - antiques - Handlery hotel - four art galleries - sushi - art gallery - liquor store

Cafe - hotel - two big “legit stage” theaters - clothes - mysterious hotel/club

Cafe Monaco/Grand Hotel - hair salon - Irish goods - apartments - cafe - Club Swig - tailor - manicures - clothes - two apartment buildings - taqueria - smoke shop

Cafe - laundry - viet seafood - plaza - CRDC career training agency - liquor - alley - mysterious dark storefront - two hair salons - chinese food - lobby - apartment building - phones - market - deli

Sports bar - pizza - flowers - laundry - three apartment buildings - hair salon - five apartment buildings

Massage - cheap hotel - smoke shop - apartments - coffee - apartments
- garage - Turkish restaurant - bar - hair salon - cafe - motel

Liquors - hotel - flowers - two apartment buildings - cafe - smog testers - massage - apartments - defunct drycleaners

Parking/auto repair - hotel - apartments - Mel’s Diner - hotel

Tommy’s Joint cafeteria - gallery - print shop - chiropractor - apartments
- hair salon - office building

Unitarian Church/Montessori school

St Mary’s Cathedral

Chinese Consulate

Apartment buildings (public housing?)

Office building - Blockbuster - offices - thai cafe

Check cashing - Fillmore auditorium - Post Office - vacant building - corner stripshops
with a dry cleaner and a KFC

Schoolyard - Benjamin Franklin middle school

Apartments

Kaiser Hospital/Medical center

Kaiser Hospital/Medical center, continued

Parking lot - Office Depot - Mervyn’s

Hawaiian restaurant - auto upholstery and convertable tops - auto shop - Supercuts - apartments

Pub - billiards - Bank of America - ethiopian restaurant - do-it-yourself car wash stalls

Furniture - furniture - empty store - ??? - locksmith

Cafe - cafe - cafe - gas station

Coffee - fish - manicures - food store - television store - Apple repair shop - hair salon

Furniture

Car dealership lot - service station - post office

Tower records - Mel’s Diner

Furniture - two cafes - print shop - phone shop - lobby - BevMo

Gas station - Pier 1 - futons - phones - two restaurants - Coronet (movie) theater - gas station

Phones - apartments - two restaurants - glasses - restaurant - bar - restaurant

Liquor store - Rohan Lounge - hair care - auto stereo - auto parts

Car lot - Shneerson Lubavitcher community center - produce market

Grocery store

Kaiser clinics and medical offices

Nurses uniform store - 2 restaurants - tibetan crafts - vacant - picture frames

Church - bank - credit center

By this point I’m at 6th Avenue and it’s time for me to pack up my bag and position myself next to the rear door of the bus so I can swoop out with the sudden swiftness of a raptor, if a raptor was getting off the 38L with a 20 pound messenger bag over its fletched shoulder.  I realized that the bus moved too fast sometimes for me to get a good look at what I was passing, and sometimes my notes were illegible even to me, so I went back a few weeks later and re-annotated the ride.  I’m still not sure this is everything - in fact, I’m sure it’s not.  It’s barely even something.  But it’s what I see so it’s what I thought I’d share with you.  And even with all this going on outside on the streets, you know that the real show is usually right on the bus riding along with me....

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Ryan Wigs Out

It’s chilly - sweater weather.  I’m even wearing an actual sweater - vintage, handknit by mom - and of course a cap, a closefitting black fleece watchcap as a matter of fact.  On my short walk at dusk to the terminal for my bus home, while I wait at the corner of Mish and Beale for the light to change, two women join me at the crosswalk.  One totes one of those metal roller dollys so ubiquitous in this post-paper-free world, the sort of tool that I don’t even notice any more, loaded down with a big cardboard box.  Her companion carries a white object, though - one that catches my eye.  It’s Ryan, or Ryan’s head, at least: a styrofoam head with “Ryan” scrawled on the side in clumsy black letters; he wears a Beatles-esque wig.  My eye moves from Ryan to the box on the dolly: it’s full of wigs, different shades of brunette, nicely teased and curled.  There are no fewer than seven or eight wigs in that box - maybe more.  I nod a “good evening” to Ryan, and then to his escorts.  “Need a wig, sir?,” one of them asks me brightly.  “How could you tell?,” I ask back, pulling off the watchcap and letting my shaved scalp shine in the streetlights.  All three of us laugh; Ryan grins knowingly.  We walk together for one block riffing on wigs and baldness, and then disperse into the deepening dark.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

vacation photos and then some

Hey there my friends, I don’t know about you but sometimes it seems there are enough words in the world already and today seems like one of those days to me.  I have a few little essays and things sketched out for the site but right now I feel more like letting the words go off and get into trouble on their own, while I just look at the pretty colors and remember a great vacation that I took less than a month ago.  Dang how time flies.  These shots were all taken in DC, and there’s a bit more description of them on the photoblog. 

If a picture is worth 1000 words, I just saved you four grand.  You can thank me later.

Oh what the hell, I’ve had a couple adventures recently and I’ll bring you along on them as well, in a pictorial sort of way because I’m just feeling like that right now. 

First, an adventure in colors: you know that we just finished painting our bedroom.  I have described the color, but that’s never going to do it justice.  Under the halogen light tonight it looks like this:

....but when we wake up at dawn and the matutinal light streams in from the east, it looks more like this:

We also painted the room next door, our office, nearly a year ago.  At that time I didn’t have a digital camera so I couldn’t let you know that those colors are more along these lines:

This means that, when I stand out in the hallway in the morning, I see all three shades together like this:

- which turns out to be a very harmonious combination, notwithstanding your goddamn opinion, which had better agree with ours because like hell are we going to repaint any of this anytime soon.  I have a life, you know. 

Speaking of which, today was the second adventure: an adventure in drinking beer, as some locals call it.  The inestimable and deepsouled Sawni sent me gift certificates for a local outpost of an excellent Oregon brewery, which is located in the heart of one of my favorite and least-visited districts, North Beach.  We went and cashed in today. 

One reason I rarely go to North Beach is that the parking is horrendous.  However, within five minutes of my first drive-by, we’d found a convenient and legal spot opening up right off Washington Square (which, though Washington hisself could not allegedly tell a lie, is more like a rectangle bisected by a street that turns it into an irregular pentagon and a triangle).  Here’s the place, right at the corner in that big brick building, with the green awning:

But wouldn’t you know it, a traditional-sounding place in an old building in an old neighborhood, and they went and make everything stainless steel and strobe lights and euroglitzy.  Or did they?  Naw, they really didn’t.  These guys are pretty authentic, in their brew and their decor.  Here’s a little slice of the interior, with the olde gas-lamp electrolier and the stained glass:

Now you may be wondering, Dan has found convenient parking on a beautiful day in a really nice part of North Beach, and is sitting in a homey, cozy brewpub with like 20 beers on tap, waiting for a big bowl of gumbo and a glass fof I2PA - the Imperial India Pale Ale, a wine-strong beer with lots of flavor and a vigorous but not overbearing effervescence.  How do I feel?  I feel a lot like this guy does:

See, he’s in a pretty good mood, but he knows something’s missing - something important.  That’s right, it’s his beer.  Oh, here it is now, and see what a difference it makes:

Now there’s a happy lush.  Kel and I each ate a very enjoyable and satisfying meal and then took a stroll through the neighborhood.  We were looking for the ethnic arts gallery where we recently bought our Ghanean sentry sculputre, but instead wound up on Grant street at a cool rambling asian arts emporium where we saw some japanese transom panels that would look great over the bed we intend to get sometime soon.  The place was a fascinating warren of tiny corridors and steep staircases and dim lights; it smelled of mystery and wormwood.  But I thought it would be tacky to take pictures there so tough noogies to you. 

On our way back to the car we stopped off at Caffe’ Trieste, an ancient and deeply authentic espresso house, where I got one of the best espressos I’ve ever had in my life and Kel said the same about her non-fat latte’ - we both feel like giving up coffee for a while now because they did such an amazing job that anything else would be a letdown.  I took this photo of their facilities:

So for those of you who typically destroy your living rooms, Caffe Treiste respectfully requests that you work it out of your system next door at Fior D’Italia, where the crappers are easier to clean and better-lit. 

Final notes: on the good side, we saw Hero and Harold and Kumar, both of which we enjoyed very much in their own ways.  On the down side, we returned to our Sunday yoga class today after our instructor had taken about a month off in Spain, and he ended class by telling us that it was his last one - he’d do some special 2-hour extravaganzas every so often but the weekly asana freakout was over.  Such is life - some things begin, some things end, and some things just keep going on even though you only get to spend a few minutes enjoying them every long while.  I’ve decided to be okay with that.  And thus, this word-free post concludes.  Good thing I didn’t decide to get loquacious on your asses.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Street Preacher

I was on the same old bus to work with the ‘buds in my ears, listening, as I recall, to The New Mixes (which I heartily recommend), when I realized I was missing the floor show.  The main attraction was a man, large and dark, standing up in the stairwell right next to me, facing the front of the bus and testifying in a loud and impassioned voice.  He was dressed in a blue windbreaker and reasonably fresh jeans, but his intensity and indiscretion on that commuters’ special busline belied his seeming normalcy.  Even from behind him I could see that his face was contorting and his neck bulged as he spoke.  I turned off my tunes and dislodged an earbud around Fillmore street, and listened to him preach till he got off on on the grungy corner at Jones.  To the best of my foggy recollection, this is what he had to say:

“Check it: you wake up every morning praising yourself for all the things you buy, the sex you have, for going out and eating in fine restaurants and having your warm bed under you, and you should be praising God, God Almighty, for the breath in your lungs - your love for yourself is a substitute, a substitute for the one true love of Jesus and you can’t even see it, but when you get back to your house at night you feel empty and alone and you don’t know why; you’ve blinded yourself, you delude yourself, and you can’t even see it, so you go and buy a faster car and more expensive clothes and fancy jewelry and boots and booze and you drive to your job where you sit all day doing nothing at all, nothing for no one, and it makes you crazy so you stay up all night thinking of more stuff to buy for yourself to make yourself feel good but it’s all a substitution - money for love and sex for holiness and a selfish job doing selfish things for selfish people instead of committing yourself to the betterment of the people you spend all your life ignoring - well check this, I’ve got no job and I’m full of love and holiness and the spirit of Jesus and I got a happiness you’ll never know....”

I’m sure he said more, but that’s all I could remember when I tried to write it down. But one thing I didn’t forget was the way the air on that bus vibrated after he stepped off onto the cold and filthy street.  I looked over to the riders sitting opposite me, and one middle-aged businesswoman knit her brow and gave me a tiny shake of her head.  I couldn’t tell if she was letting me know that she thought he was crazy, or if she had recognized herself in his tortured words, and was wondering now whether to keep going on her way to work.  But by the time she left the bus, her brow was smooth and she walked with the confidence of a woman who doesn’t need to look behind her, and the air through which she moved was very, very still.

Pink Parasol: a Linked Post

Today I was thinking of posting a piece about a streetpreacher I encountered a week or so ago, someone whose sermon seemed consonant with the theme of Not One Dime day, which is today, for those of you keeping track. 

But INSTEAD, I find that today is the day I’ve been guest-blogged on one of the finest sites in the blogiverse, Lilywhite Intentions, managed by the beautiful and brilliant Jules, who is having a very challenging week.  Jules, I wish you much luck in surviving the maelstrom, and until then, I hope my little story about Slow Pink Parasol Guy is entertaining for you and your many loyal followers - among whom I am proud to number myself. 

I’ll be back tomorrow with my sermonette.  Till then, send some love and strength Jules’ way.  She is like the pink parasol that rises above the fray to make all things, even the ordinary, even the ugly, sublime.  Except she’s not lined with foil and she has a rapier hidden inside her.  And a tiny flask of the good stuff, but that’s for later.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Traffic Report

I don’t know what has happened, but starting yesterday, my site traffic has gone through the roof.  I’m getting two or three times the number of visits I’ve ever gotten before, and I don’t think they’re all from automated web-bots and spiders and such - they’re mostly searches for the typical stuff, and by “typical stuff” I mean that 3/4s of them seem to be looking for various pornographic materials ranging from the amusing to the provocative to the repulsive; the remainder are looking for recipes or restaurants or musicians or parks or the typical things I usually talk about.  I’m just as glad that this legion of visitors is not leaving weird random comments in my mailbox, but it does strike me as strange that I’m getting so much traffic and so few comments.  I’d expect to see a correlation between the two but I guess I expect a lot of stuff that just isn’t so. 

I just figured, it’s weird, and I’m all about sharing the weirdness.  I’m not trolling for comments, but if anyone else is experiencing a huge spike in random traffic, I’d be interested in hearing your theory about it.  And for those who care but don’t know, if you click on the little spectral square near the bottom of my sidebar, you can see under “referrals” what kind of traffic I’m talking about.  “Boudoir ideas?” “Bikers church near me?” “Funny pantomimes?” (I’ve omitted the ones that are off-color or worse.) What the hell is going on, all of a sudden?

And just to make it worth your while, here’s a few bits-o-honey from my recently completed memo book:

Fresh Coat

Don’t forget - tomorrow is “Not One Dime“ day, which I mentioned in passing in yesterday’s post too.  Meantime, here’s a belated journal-type entry about my weekend.  Enjoy it if you dare.

Written Sunday 1/16, 12:10 am to 1:30 am

Back on my back, for night #2 of displacement.  But “displacement” only feels like the right word in a superficial way.  Maybe I need a new word to describe where I am, lying on the wonderful tan couch in the living room under two love-imbued comforters, a rich tasty dinner in my belly, laughter still aching in my sides, and my bedroom down the hall stripped, but well on its way to being reborn as a much more habitable space.  Not so much “displaced,” then, as in happy transit to a reborn place - I’ll call it “neoplaced” for want of a better name. 

Friday night, though I got home from work feeling a bit under the weather, we moved all the furniture out of the bedroom - except for the big sleighbed, which we covered with a tarp - and I took a sander to the baseboards while Kel Dremeled out the window mouldings.  Then we bedded down in the living room to try to get some sleep.

We eventually woke up about 12 hours later, thanks to the power of our super-soporific sofas.  I slept longer, deeper, and more satisfyingly than I have in months, stretched out under comforters that defy wakefulness.  Once we finally roused ourselves, we vacuumed and tarped the bedroom floors and then we painted the ceiling.  I’ve written before about this process; my sentiments about it remain unchanged - if anything, they’re amplified. There’s something about jamming a roller in a pan of liquid freshness and running it back and forth overhead, watching tired old greyness get eclipsed by cheerful crisp cleanliness, my arms and shoulders bunched and straining as I force the roller up against the ceiling of my bedroom, the upper limit of my most intimate living space, unable actually to push it higher but effectively raising it up with every stroke I take because it grows brighter and newer, more accomodating and less oppressive… I had felt, the night before, as I ground off layers of old semigloss and tore out defunct phone wires that had not carried data for decades and as I chisled out thick accretions of paint, generations of color, undisturbed, it seemed, since time began, chipping it off as a dentist cleans plaque off long-neglected teeth, that I was grinding and chiseling my way through stultifying strata of inertia and apathy, down to a base level where the original potential could once again be glimpsed and maybe even accessed, a place from which new efforts could be constructively begun, a true opportunity for a fresh start.... And as the ceiling turned from a heavy soiled palm pushing down on us into a reflection of an unbounded future, ready to inspire us as we open our eyes to it each morning, I felt as if, from bottom to top, this new paint job would really make every bit as much difference as I could ever have hoped. 

Between coats, we went out for a quick jog around Stow Lake, where the plum trees are just coming into first bloom even as the gardeners are pruning back the rose bushes into thorny twisted twigs; the eel-man was out feeding seagulls that stood with chunks of stale breadin their gaping beaks, and a movie crew was building a pier into the lake from which people on the old stone bridge could be filmed.  They were also setting out dozens of fake fall trees, plastic maples with vibrant plastic red foliage and pseudo-sycamores in synthetic yellow, all nailed onto tidy cruciform wooden stands that were being carefully camoflaged with skeins of ersatz ivy.  The air was cool and clear and crisp, and the run was almost effortless - as we ran together, Kel and I, our communication left our words behind; our breath and pulse shared all we cared to share, or wished or needed to. 

I detoured on the way home to get some supplies around the corner from our apartment at the friendly local pet-care store; this sent me past the medical marijuana shop twice and, both times, people strolling out with discrete paper sacks gave me broad cheerful salutations; at the crowded, claustrophobic pet goods store a general attitude of congenial harmony prevailed as people in line shared stories about their beloved fuzzy and feathered friends. 

We had time for the second coat on the ceiling before cleaning up for our drive down to Santa Cruz for a bloggers-and-spouses supper that was full of butter, wine and laughter.  Seeing Remy spray Pete with a fine mist of diet coke as he belatedly picked up on my line, “Dude, do you have a mirror?,” made the 200 mile round-trip drive totally worth it all by itself, though of course the rest of the evening was a delight as well, excepting the chagrin I felt as I realized that I was chatting at the bar with two other men and we all three of us had shaved heads and black leather jackets - like a cattle call for the russian mafia.  But we got past that and had a great time, with a quick and uneventful drive back home… which brings me to now. 

Now it’s well past midnight, Kel’s snoozing on the other sofa and we get to paint the walls tomorrow - that is, today - finally covering the 12 patches of sample colors we laid out months ago with the one warm colonial hue that looked good everywhere, under all lighting conditions.  Those twelve patches have been a standing challenge all these months - a challenge to embrace an opportunity, to revive ourselves and our lives.  Soon, today, we will grasp that opportunity and wring a new future out of it.  But first, I think it may be time to get a little more sleep.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

…But Not One Cent for Tribute

The good news: I’ve finished with the bugs, it’s out of my system.  Thanks, all of you, for playing along; you’ve been great sports and we’ll have a lovely parting gift for any of you still hanging around my porchlight later tonight. 

More good news: there is ever so much crap for me to drone about.  I’ve got stuff about mass-transit preachers and girl-on-girl contact sports and a Geary Boulevard inventory; wigging out and dining out and painting the bedroom and many other lovely things.  It would be easy and fun to start this short week-after-a-three-day-weekend with an entertaining bit of fluff, a giggle or, possibly, an eponymous chuckle.  But today I can’t do it.  Today I actually am going to try to be responsible, politically relevant, and part of an even more important meme than even Obfuscations or the Vanity Project were.

Here’s the deal: in two days, we here in the U.S. of frikkin’ A are re-inaugurating our president.  He’s already president, of course, but he won reelection and he wants another party.  Maybe that’s healthy - maybe it’s something good for democracy, to celebrate the peaceful non-transition of power and the electoral system at large.  I was thinking of organizing scraps of democracy-related decoupage for an Electroral Collage, but that medium really isn’t the message I want to send. 

Here’s the issue for me: we’re on our way to spending some $40 million on the re-inauguration.  I understand this is all privately donated money, so all I can say about it is that I’m not sure why we need a bigger party for this “How Can We Say Goodbye If You Don’t Leave” soiree than we had for the first GWB inauguration, or for the first Clinton inauguration for that matter (and, by the accounts I’ve been able to unearth, nearly twice as much as for the second Clinton inaugural).  This party is so big it’ll have nine balls, of which only the one for the military is free, if you call that “free.”

But nothing is really free, not even free stuff: it seems that the city of Washington DC will still be forced to spend close to $18 million of public money on security, of which close to $12 million is not coming out of “homeland security” funds but will be paid for with dollars that might better go for an afterschool program or a senior’s meal program or something.  And here’s where I really start to dig in my heels: This event exemplifies, for me, the selfish excesses of this reactionary regieme.  They’re not conservatives, by a long shot: conservatives don’t spend this kind of money on a party, they save it.  They also preserve civil rights and national resources.  This administration, on the other hand, has never found a reason to stop spending the people’s money on programs and policies that are explicitally partisan and parochial in nature: it has bought and paid for positive-spin p.r. and called it news (most lately on No Child Left Behind, but previously on abstinence training, environmental issues, stem cell research, and a long list of others); it’s overpaid the veep’s former company by billions of dollars; it’s squandered a budget surplus and turned it into a budget deficit without increasing funding for education or supporting veterans or the elderly.... This is why “compassionate conservatism” is a crock: they’re not conserving a damn thing and their only compassion is for themselves. 

And now they’re lining up millions upon millions of corporate dollars to celebrate a one-minute ceremony that I don’t really feel too good about in the first place.  We started our response to the greatest natural disaster in 100 years with a pledge of $35 million.  Add another $5 million to that and you can throw one hell of a party, I guess. 

This festival of self-congratulation is just too narcissistic for me to take any part in it.  In fact, I’ve decided to take part, instead, in a simultaneous nationwide statement of disapproval.  I don’t buy into the cant and rhetoric I see on line about this counter-event: it’s not going to affect the national economy in any meaningful way, it’s not going to put one dollar in a better place than it would otherwise be - but it is a way for me to express how sorry I am that we’re still pissing away money on onanism when our own people, to say nothing of others around the world, need it so much more badly. 

So here’s what I’m going to do, or not do: on Thursday, January 20, 2005, I intend not to spend any money.  I’ll have a bus pass to get to and from work; a sack lunch; coffee or water from the corporate teat… I urge anyone who is not happy with the way this country has handled itself lately, whether or not you thought Bush was the better man in the race, to join me in spending NOT ONE DIME on thursday.  I’m giving you lead time so you can get any necessary expenditures out of the way early.  Plan ahead, and then go without for one lousy day.  It’s not gonna kill you.  It’s not even going to make you stand on a box with electrodes taped to your privates for 8 hours at a shot. 

It’s also not going to change the world, but if enough people participate, it may get someone’s attention.  Let’s not forget the national movement to burn albums by the Dixie Chicks when one of them said she was ashamed of being from a state that spawned our president.  That movement recalled the excesses of Nazism but was considered, by the reactionary ranks that embraced it, as nothing more than free speech and the expression of personal opinion.  And I can’t say I’d have stopped them even if I could have, though I disagreed with them.  It was their money, their property, their right to free expression.  That’s the American way, or it should be.  And now it looks like it’s my turn to use my wallet as a bully pulpit, and I’m going to take the bait. 

Forty-eight percent of us who voted did not vote for this President, and many of the remainder gave him the nod only with grave misgivings.  Does he have a mandate?  If you don’t want him to think so, join me and many of my friends on Thursday.  We’ll be the ones with the lunchboxes and the sanctimonious looks on our faces.  And really, isn’t it time the liberals got to feel sanctimonious for once in a blue moon?

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Does This Bug You?

I’m off on Monday for Mondo Luther King day, which cometh not a day too soon.  Man, January is dragging like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, but without the adorable owl glasses.  So I’m gonna try to throw down a post for today that will keep people occupied for three whole days. Is it possible?  In the words of the aforementioned Tootsie pop owl: LET’S FIND OUT.  Ahem. 

So, what would really capture the attention of the blogreading public?  I know what always focuses my attention: HUGE SCARY BUGS!  During my vacation in Maryland I heard about one of the hugest, scariest bugs ever anywhere, and it seemed to me that I’d be remiss in my duties to people reading this at work, trying to maintain their professional demeanors, not to gross, freak, and creep you all right out of your tender, tasty skin.  I’m not going to rank these, they’re all sufficiently hideous to be number “1” in somebody’s book - a book which should only be used for dropping on and crushing the following HUGE SCARY BUGS:

Exceeding Expectations

Three things that went better than expected:

1) Last week I got to my Tuesday night yoga class after a relaxing vacation during which I slept on a soft bed, ate prodigously, drank more, and basically let myself slip far away from the disciplined physical culture which I try to maintain while I’m at home.  I therefore came to that class with trepidation - but I breezed through it, barely even breaking a sweat.  It was so easy for me, in fact, that the next day I barely even felt it, and experienced very little “carryover” strength or limberness or vitality through the rest of the week.  Still, I forced myself to continue to do my morning stretching and to eat my sensible salads and my diminutive dinners and I slowly built back a sense of physical fitness by the time I girded my loins for class this past Tuesday night.  I felt ready for it this time, I was geared up and eager to take it on.  Riiight.  That class kicked my ass.  I was in a full-body sweat within 15 minutes and, though I was able to do all the poses, most of them felt very challenging - even the ones I usually handle without difficulty.  I got home totally spent, and the next day - yesterday - I woke up feeling like all my muscles had shrunk a few sizes overnight, especially the backs of my legs and my lower back.  I spent most of yesterday in my deskchair, but whenever I got up or moved around I felt the impact of that class, all the way till I got into bed last night.  I read for a while and then when I turned to put out the light, my muscles suddenly relaxed and my spine and hips released with a series of very audible pops and I suddenly felt more comfortable, healthier and better, than I had in weeks.  The class where I had been ready for anything had left me just where I started, but the class that made me stiff and sore for a full day left me feeling sublime - that is, once the ache and rictus had passed.  I remain shocked at how little I got out of the class where things came easily, and how much good I got out of the class where I struggled. 

2) I have spent a good bit of the past year creating a database in Access that tracks information about a project I administer.  It’s my first foray into using this software in a really hands-on way, and I’ve been slowly building my competence to the point that I thought I could actually make it do what I wanted it to do.  Yesterday I was instructed to prepare the next round of disbursements - to generate the paperwork that would identify the programs that had not yet gotten their grants but had completed their filing requirements.  I punched up the report I’d designed for this purpose - and got nothing.  Great, I’d screwed it up.  There was a bug in the system or a programming error or some damn thing and it was my responsibility and it was my fault and it was not working right and I was getting frustrated and OH YEAH I need to tell the computer that we’d signed the contracts for the programs that had fulfilled their requirements… I had one more question for myself about how to make things work, not just properly, but exceptionally well, so I pulled out a 700 page reference book that just happened to have a single post-it that flagged EXACTLY the page I needed ... and now the damn thing works like a charm.  It’s finally really done, and I did it. 

3) As some of you know, I own the world’s most powerful piece of outerware, an indian-blanket jacket with vibrant colors, warm and nearly waterproof.  But it’s gotten rather tired, and when I noticed I’d worn through the bottom of one sleeve I knew it was time to replace it.  Also, because it’s so vibrant, people on the street come up to talk to me about it, and they’re usually people who smell weird and want me to give them some money or cigarettes or a place to crash.  So I went out last weekend and found a black leather jacket that is understated, heavy and warm.  It’s not water resistant, but that’s all it lacks.  I wore it for the first time yesterday and I can already tell that it’s imbued with special charisma enhancers that even the indian blanket jacket didn’t possess.  This morning is very chilly and damp, but I was perfectly warm in my new coat.  I have actually upgraded from the world’s most powerful piece of outerware.  I am fulfilled.

That’s enough joy for a Thursday morning, isn’t it?  Time for me to get to work.  Keep warm, let the system do the work for you, and if you find yourself a bit achy and uncomfortable, it may just mean that you’ll feel better than you could imagine sooner than you think!

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Search Strings

Again, a very quiet day - no comments,* on a story I must admit I consider rather over-written.  Who has time for this crap on a Wednesday?  Well I obviously do, but that’s my problem.  No comments and it’s noon-thirty?  I went and checked my stats.  I like checking my stats every so often; it’s nice to see my friends and neighbors and parole officer stopping by to make sure I’m keeping out of trouble and away from schoolyards.  I don’t get too many hits, less than 100 per day on average, and a good number of them are from yours truly so they don’t really count anyway. 

*of course, now that I have got this little screed nearly finished, I see I have three lovely comments from three very lovely and dear friends.  Thank you, each and all, for putting the lie to my whine.  Goes to show you.  Or me.  You know what I mean.

I usually get visitors from a few places I recognize, and from a bunch of IP addresses that mean nothing to me, and from a whole passel of “unknowns” or “blocked” - and then there are always a few folk who are attracted by random internet searches.  Sometimes these searches are entertaining; usually they’re not.  People typically visit when they’re searching for things I’ve written about, like breakfast cereal or candy or the Transportation Security Agency.  I get hit repeatedly with searches for some of the photos and images I’ve posted over the years, some of which I can sort of understand, and some of which I really don’t.  (Why is the image of an x-ray of a badly broken wrist so popular?  How do people keep finding that photo of the women in the lake mooning the camera?) It’s usually a pretty predictable and boring lot. 

Today, however, I checked my stats and the “search refer” hits were unusually entertaining, so I thought, instead of sharing something of value with you all (such as it may be), I’d just tell you what got people interested enough to visit this site recently.  By doing this, of course, I reinforce the faint but measurable attraction of the Chucklehut, thereby increasing my odds of getting the goofball public to wander in again for a peek-around.  Eventually I’ll be able to post nothing but search strings that led people here, and these will be so attractive to the websurfing world at large that I’ll crash the server.  Then I will be blown, bohdisattvah-like, into nirvana, just like what happened to Courtney Love.  I tell ya, I’ll stop at nothing to attract readers. 

The following, then, are searches that attracted people to this site between midnight last night and 12:30 GMT -8 today:

* Funny “latin phrases” underware
* (search that turned up a photo I took of a doorknob in sonoma - which seems to get a few visits every week)
* how did they come up with the name arby’s (note: dude, it’s a R-oast B-eef place, do they let you turn on the computer all by yourself?)
* meaty hunk bears
* curried pizzle
* bucaneer hotel in treasure island florida
* big overweight heavyset women in bathing suits
* (search for images of smith fracture (broken wrist) - inexplicably popular)
* funny one lines in movie greese
* (search for images of blade the ubervampire - I once posted a drawing of him fighting buffy - explicably popular)
* human race need to wallow around so voyeuristically
* (search for smith fracture image - told ya)
* kilt rental shops orange county
* (search for images of blade)
* (search for images of blade)
* (search for images of blade)

These all came in from different IP addresses.  Nobody stayed for very long.  All I can say is, except for people looking for the xray of a broken wrist, I am sorry to have disappointed you.  Story of my freaking life.  And for all those of you who are here because you typed in a weird search that turned up this post: well, now you know better.  I wish I did.  See you here tomorrow - even if you don’t show up.

Compared to What?

I was just moving on from the Dead to jazz, a classic grad school maneuver in the late 1980s.  Luckily, I lived in LA and both radio and live jazz performances were of exceptional breadth and quality.  I don’t remember where I first heard “Compared to What,” but I remember that it shifted my whole point of view about music.  I went immediately to Tower on Sunset to get the disk, raving to the jaded post-punk clerk how great it was; he just sneered and rolled his eyes but he had no idea what was really going down on that old recording - I popped it in the stereo at full-blast volume as soon as I got home and had a religious experience.  I was converted to jazz, and was pretty sure I’d finally achieved coolness too.

Not too long after that, Les McCann was scheduled to do a show at the Vine, an intimate little Hollywood club.  We were very happy to make it a priority to attend, and got there some twenty minutes before showtime - which was pretty impressive for us in those days.  The place was very quiet - nice piano noodling on the stereo, 2 or 3 other couples in attendance at the cozy cocktail tables that speckled the floor.  We seemed to be the youngest cats in the house.  Since plenty of good seats up front were still available, we took a table stageside next to some other patrons and ordered some drinks. 

Not too long after the appointed time, Les came out and put on a great show; his combo was as tight as a headgasket and they sounded great.  But the audience really never got much bigger; Les made a few comments to some of the us about it, chatting amiably between selections with the guy next to me, the guy next to him.... at some point during the intermission the guy at the next table leaned over to ask me, “Excuse me, are you a musician?”

“No, I’m in law school; I’m just getting into this scene.” I tried to be as cool as I thought I was.

“I was wondering,” the man said, “because I’m a musician.” My vision of him deepened instantly.  He might have been in his 50s, with sandy hair fading to grey that swept down over his ears and neck - a throwback style.  His clothes were jam session specials - blazer, button shirt, slacks.  His chin was square and he sported a thick but neatly groomed moustache. By his side, an attractive blonde woman of some maturity provided a gender counterpoint, stylishly but casually dressed with a few discrete pieces of nice jewelry sparkling in the murk of the club. 

The man’s eyes said much more than the rest of his face; even as a wry smile barely creased his tan cheeks, his eyes - under impassive brows - challenged me to recognize him.

But I was a callow neophyte, I didn’t know squat about this universe of hipsters and groovesters.  I spent too much of my time confronting my own ignorance in superegoistical lecture hall debates; I was ashamed to be so abjectly ignorant here.  I feared that, if I asked him who he was, I wouldn’t recognize the name he’d tell me, embarassing him and minimizing myself among this small clutch of jazz studs and their hot squeezes.  So I took the easy way out and said nothing.  I just smiled, went on to another topic and eventually we both returned our attention to our respective dates. 

Shortly thereafter, as the band returned to the stage, the trumpet player stepped out to warm up and my new anonymous buddy walked over to him; they greeted with an embrace and talked about the new horn he was blowing that night, admiring together its gleaming goldness.  “Can I check it out?,” my neighbor asked, hands extended.  “Um.... no,” said the man from the band.  Unperturbed, Mr. Noname continued with the conversation till Les himself came over to say yo.  They had a nice catch-up session for a minute or two; I tried not to eavesdrop but this was pretty big time for me and my attention was locked in despite my efforts to the contrary. 

Les turned his massive frame and his attention my way.  “And hey, how you doing?,” he asked me unironically with a magnanimous smile.  “Do I know you?”

“No, hi, I’m Dan, this is Kelly; you don’t know me but I just picked up Swiss Movement and I wanted to catch the original in action.”

“Oh, that was you?,” he asked me, chuckling.  “Well thanks for coming out,” he said with a grin at the nearly empty house and a massive handshake that was like wrapping five bratwursts around my hand.

That handshake enveloped and warmed me for the whole second set and my ride home, and, to some extent, even to the present time.  When the show ended I said goodbye to my neighbors and we parted company.  I never did learn who he was, and I still wonder. 

MORAL: Screw thinking you’re cool; that goes double for trying to convince others that you are.  If you don’t know something, ask.  Les didn’t mind asking, so I shouldn’t have either. Unanswered questions only grow darker and more mysterious over time; unexpected answers abound for those with the guts to inquire after them.  You may be afraid you’ll be embarassed not to know something - but compared to what?

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Collections and Recollections

Damn but I slept hard last night.  Maybe it was the rain on the roof, or several days of sleeping poorly and fitfully, or maybe it was the lovely roast pork tenderloin and veggies warming up my belly… along with some whiskey… and wine.... and a little port with chocolate for dessert.... naw, I guess it was just the whim of the fates, but whatever it was, I could barely get out of bed this morning.  When the alarm went off I did not recognize it; I snoozed twice and fell so deeply asleep both times that I still dis-recognized the alarm when it went off the second and third times.  But now I’m awake and feeling pretty well rested; I had a successful dental appointment (which always makes me feel better - once it’s over); and of course, Anisara Yoga tonight.  (I think technically it’s spelled with a “u” in place of the “i” I used there, but I don’t want to do forward bends and down dogs in a discipline that refers to itself in any way as “anus.")

BUT: I’ll need all the energy I can garner for the weekend - a weekend that will include a dinner date in Santa Cruz with some beautiful bloggers and their spectacular spouses, a visit to Andy and Heidi to play with them and their lovely children - including three-week-old Gabe, and of course, the TOTAL REPAINTING OF THE BEDROOM. 

Yes, it’s finally time to turn the sleeping chamber into an enlivening space. It’s a nice big room with big windows and hardwood floors, but that tired old dust-grey paint has got to go and now’s the time.  In preparation for that endeavor I took some time cleaning up and cleaning out - especially my dresser.  As I did this, I realized that it was a sort of mini-museum, or really, a collection of mini-museums - I had acquired three separate collections on and in it, each of which was meaningful to me.  They’re so meaningful, in fact, that I’ve decided to share them with the cyberworld.  That’s you, you lucky ducks! 

Sadly, I have no collection of ducks, lucky or starcrossed.  But I do curate the following dresser-based collections:

Monday, January 10, 2005

Bad Weather

It’s been a great weekend and 2005 is starting off very well.  This, regardless of a meteorological battering we’ve been getting since before christmas.  This morning is a stormbreak, but soon enough the rain will start again, which mainly means I can’t wear my new leather jacket to work.  The earth mourns this loss of a critical sartorial influence, but I’m sure it’ll clear up enough by August for me to get a bit of use out of the new coat.  In the meantime I feel well rested even though I did not sleep much last night; the new auditor starts today - easing the most confusing part of my workload for me; I’ve packed a truly excellent salad for lunch; and I’m looking forward to a week of productive and engaging efforts at the office and at home. 

With everything so right except the weather, I’ve been thinking back on a story idea I had years ago about a week of bad weather and the people who live in it.  And here it is.  I know I said on friday it would be a five-part serialization, but as it turns out, there’s not enough of it for that.  I’m giving it all to ya in one big shot.  Because that’s the kind of guy I am.  You know what they say, if you don’t like the weather, get out of the kitchen.....

Friday, January 07, 2005

huh

well, I’ll admit that I thought that last post was pretty cool, but it seems the blogging public doesn’t have much to say about it.  And I can live with that.  I understand it.  I’m mature that way. 

Yeah right.  I’m as much of a comment whore as the next guy (assuming that the next guy is a comment whore), so it does make me wonder.  Not so much that I’d do anything about it, but enough to get me to make another post.  So here’s what I have in mind: I just finished my latest little memobook, filled it on up to the end, and there’s a lot of crap in there that I planned to post but never got on line.  So here are a few of those random notions, and I’ll keep cranking through them every so often till I’m done.  Nothing like truly random crap to generate public interest, eh?

So without further ado:

Stubs

He gets on at a huge thoroughfare where a lot of questionable characters enter and leave the bus.  At first he doesn’t seem too fringe: his beige jacket is in good condition and fairly clean; his jeans still have some color to them and his hands and face, though deeply tanned, are not excessively dirty or weathered.  It’s only after several stops that I notice how his thick black hair appears to have gone uncut and uncombed for a very long time, and how his gaze wanders with either impatience or inquietude; how his feet are folded before him almost protectively and his fingers look thick and crude.  Still, he doesn’t smell noticeably, he doesn’t mutter or sway, and he maintains himself within himself as the bus rolls west. 

I’m reading or writing in my book or some damn thing, occasionally glancing over to him to see if he somehow reveals himself to me.  And then, he does.

We’re out in the middle reaches of the ride, where the streets are particularly dark, throwing the interior of the bus into lurid relief - the windowpanes, smeary mirrors reflecting our own interiority as we rumble along.  He looks down and digs a clumsy-looking hand into his jacket pocket, pulls out a pack of Parliaments.  Is he going to light one up?  I raise my eyes and prepare to scowl him into social propriety but he ignores me, flips open the boxtop and quickly tallies how many smokes he has left.  His face is utterly impassive.  The box, I notice, is battered, but he has carefully maintained it in its approximate original shape. After a few moments he closes the box and puts it away.  I’m relieved; I neither have to endure him smoking nor need I confront him about it. 

But his hand is still digging, now in his right front pants pocket.  He withdraws treasure from its intimate depths - a bundle, a bindle, a handful of something wrapped in a tired-looking coffeehouse napkin.  With unexpected delicacy and nimbleness, he unwraps the cylindrical hoard, revealing about a dozen partly smoked cigarettes.  I immediately smell the sour stale stench and re-ready my scowl.  He’s paying me no nevermind, though, gazing raptly on his clutch of stubby soiled cigs.  He selects the longest one and places it in his mouth with tender alacrity.  It rests on his lower lip as he deftly rewraps the napkin and slips his stash back into his coat.  Having then gone as far as he can, he makes no move to light up.  Rather, he leans back just a little in his seat, inhales deeply through his mouth, and his dark eyes narrow to slits.  And that’s how he sits for several minutes, till his stop appears outside the doors.  Then he stirs into awareness and softly steps out into the shaggy untended night, the stub still dead in his mouth.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Special Occasion

Nana might not appreciate it, but we broke out the good stuff – and I’m loving it.

My grandparents indisputably had style, but honestly, it was not my style. Though they lived in small-town Ohio, they traveled the world, dressed fashionably, attended concerts and the theater, and kept a very well-appointed home.  They had so many lovely things that it became a family joke that they incessantly quibbled over who would “get” what when they were gone.  They went so far as to have us label their belongings for our respective inheritances. But all their decanters and silver ashtrays and special things obviously belonged with them in Lima.  I didn’t want any of it to be anywhere else – especially not my own home.  These were objects that represented a staid conventionality that just didn’t jive with my mismatched improvisational life.  They were Lima things, and that’s where god wanted them to be.

When Nana and Grumpy broke down their household and moved to the progressive-care facility where they both eventually passed away, boxes and crates of their china and stemware and chotchkes* and accoutrements were going to be jettisoned if somebody in the family did not adopt them and take them in. Some of that stuff was nice, too, so even though I couldn’t see what I’d do with it, I put in my claim and got my share.

The goods arrived in good condition and I was happy to find some wineglasses and coasters we could really use, along with loads of other stuff – hand-embroidered but poorly maintained linens, scads of cocktail napkins, and fancy place settings.  A few items went right into circulation; most of it went into a low drawer or onto a high shelf where it sat quietly for years.

But we have been running out of plates and glasses lately, so Kel went and fished out some classic Ohio brunchwear: voluminous crystal water goblets with incised stars, and hexagonal green-rimmed plates with decals of spring flowers in the center from good old Czecko-slovakia. When I saw these relics in among our cozy old tablewear in the cupboard, it looked terribly foreign and out-of-place – museum pieces in the thriftshop of my life.  I like my low-key downstyle setup and the old-new pieces just didn’t feel like they fit.

But yesterday morning I needed a midsized plate for my toast-n-cottage cheese, and before I realized it I’d pulled down a fancypants hexagonal plate and suddenly my boring breakfast had become a gourmet petite-dejeuner.  I was not willing to be outclassed by my own food, so I sat up straighter, got a little tidier (a challenge with that meal; the cottage cheese falls off the toast with every bite), and found myself just feeling better about the morning.  So much better, that I fetched down out a star-spangled goblet and poured myself a few ounces of blueberry-pomegranate juice and filled the rest with seltzer. 

So there I sat in my spacious but ordinary kitchen, where my regular boring breakfast had been transformed into something sophisticated and elegant. Sure, I still wound up pouring plenty of cottage cheese down my chin and onto my fleece pullover, but on the table I had European flowers to brighten the morning and when I took a sip of effervescent juice it was from an effervescent goblet that sparkled in the gloomy early light of the day.  The food tasted better and was more fun to eat. 

I know that my grandparents did not keep these plates or goblets for “everyday” use, and they were sticklers for this kind of propriety – one did not use the wrong plate at the wrong time in their house.  That’s probably why I wasn’t comfortable using these items indiscriminately at first.  But now that the ice has been broken, I see that these plates and glasses had a much broader applicability than I’d originally understood.  There is no reason why every morning should not be an occasion for festive fast-breaking.  In fact, on reflection, there are innumerable reasons to embrace just such an innovation in my life.  So, sorry, Nana and Grandpa – the plates are no longer for special occasions.  Or, alternately, “special occasions” has been redefined to include every morning I wake up and want breakfast. 

*Is there a correct spelling for this word?  As I draft this opus-ette, spellcheck tells me I’ve got it wrong and suggests the following list of alternatives: crotches, chocks, churches, hotcakes, hutches.  I’m thinking, there is a story waiting to be written about this series of words, but it’s not the story I’m writing now. 

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Rayzor Sharp

I expect I’ve got some of the details wrong, and this time I am likely to get called on it.... but what with my recent trip to the east and a short jaunt through some authentic DC streets, and of course my own perverse mental apparatus, I’ve been having a serious pizza jones lately - and it’s put me in mind of my slice of Original Ray.

I’d been in Philly for three years or so and I’d taken to it well; I felt pretty “east coast” by the time we made, for some reason, a trip to NYC.  I don’t remember who-all “we” were, but it was at least one local (or equivalent) and Kel and me.  And, of course, the rest of Greenwich Village. 

That’s where Famous Original Ray’s is, right?  I had barely ever been to the City, had only spent a few hours there before, and everything about it was wrapped in a charismatic mystery for me.  I just tried to look it up on line to check the location of this legendary pizza shack and only got more confused, which I guess is thematically consistent.  The City is a powerful place; it messed up my sense of direction when I was there.  My head spun - sometimes independently of my will.  But on this particular trip a plan had been laid that I, the L.A. kid playing at being authentic old-coast, should get a piece of true authenticity: the real famous original veritable unabridged eponymous Ray’s.  A slice straight out of a New Yorker’s soul - sweet, tangy, fulfilling.... The city pulsed and throbbed in a kaliedoscope around me, busy and dirty and brilliant, and through it all my companions continually promised me the world - this ‘za was an experience I couldn’t miss and would never forget, I was repeatedly reminded as forgotten hands dragged me through unfamiliar streets.... and suddenly, we were there. 

I knew I was in trouble when I saw that the sign actually used the words “famous” and “original.” But rather than being put off by the gaucherie of such shameless self-promotion, I sensed foreboding.  This place, I felt, would be my undoing.  I would submit to it because there was no other way, but somehow I knew I’d live to regret it. 

Inside, the refectory was overtly underdecorated, a bare-bones food factory.  People filtered through a line to a counter where they ordered a slice or three with the toppings of their choice, and waited a minute or two for it to be delivered steaming hot and dripping cheese and grease into their waiting hands. 

We each worked our way to the counter and I ordered a sausage/onion slice without embarassing myself.  Then I stood back among the mass of hungry impatient locals to wait for my order to come up.

The big guy behind the counter called it, and quickly - “sausage slice!” His voice boombarked through the hectic waiting area and I stepped forward, asking with all the moixe I could muster, “that mine?”

“NO!  You coming up!  Wait fo’ it!,” the pizzaman bellowed at me, as the slice’s rightful owner slipped in to claim his prize.  Kel was at my shoulder and peevishly apologized for me: “Oh, he doesn’t understand… He’s from L.A."

Nothing could have been more inflammatory.  Heads swivelled to view this curiosity, this monstrosity, this exotic specimen that had almost passed itself off as indigenous.  “Oh!,” the pizzaman exclaimed, “that why he so dumb!” People laughed, nodded, pointed.  There was not much for me to say in my defense so I stood there gritting and grimacing like a cretin for a few more minutes.

“Hey!  L.A.!  This one’s yours!”

With the typical minimum of ceremony, the slice flopped into my hand like so much hot envy, thick and piquant on its sheet of wax paper.  Amidst the last few giggles at my expense I wormed my way back to the street. 

The slice was fine.  Not the best I’ve ever had, but good enough.  I prefer more sauce, less cheese, and a crust with more personality - but regardless, it was fine.  In the end, though, my slice of pizza was not really very memorable.  On the other hand, I do still find myself looking back with mixed feelings of amusement and shame upon my fat slice of Original Ray.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Random Baggage

Whew.  Got in last night from a great vacation in suburban Maryland with the inlaws, and boy are my arms tired.  Then, I forgot that I was supposed to come to work today, so I got in late and I’m behind schedule - a great way to start aught-five, eh?  Hence, this’ll be a quickie, just a few things that made me giggle over the past week. Consider it a brief excursion into the depths of the Chucklemind, and don’t worry about wiping your feet - it’s too late now to try to keep things neat and clean anyway....

Healthy ideas.  Diseased implementation.

Ikea.  Den, I kee yo fambily.

New cross-genre television concept, for foodies who like their bling tasty: Pimp My Brunch.  “We’re gonna take his soggy omlette and jack it up with purple scallions, imported bacon and cayenne flames.  Change out those biscuits and bolt on a phat crumpet; then we can upgrade to spode with 15” rims and some stylin’ high-volume stemware for that gin and juice - Bet the homies’ll be freakin’ when he shows up with this hottie at the breakfast nook!”

Finally, on the flight home, I took a moment in the lav on my Delta superjet and was confused by the iconography on the underside of the toilet lid.  It was clear enough that they were trying to tell me not to dispose of any of a series of depicted items down the poopchute.  It was the items themselves that seemed a bit… inconsistent: they want me to refrain from flushing cups, bottles, sanitary napkins, bags, razors, or a ham.  A ham?  Dang, it looked like a ham....  I think they need a better warning-sign artist, or a larger toilet.  That sucker’ll clog up with just a kielbasi or two; I’m keeping my ham out of the toilet even without your suggestion not to flush it.  Any society where people flush hams on airplanes is a society where we all need to find a new way to get around. 

It’s great to be back. Thanks for all your kind new year’s wishes, and I’ll have something more worthy of your attention tomorrow.  For the meantime, keep your ham safely stowed under the seat in front of you.