Sunday, July 30, 2006

Flashback, Flash Forward

Well, it’s been a heavy week and a stuporous weekend.  Evi, Deelie and Scott left us early Saturday morning, and Kel, Zaq and I spent the rest of the day, well, resting.  Okay, we spent a little time walking in the park, exploring the reconstructed museum concourse and playing on slides, but mostly we slept.  We had a lot of resting to catch up on, because SATURDAY WAS FAMILY DAY: the very day, last year, that Kelly and I received our fabulous child.  He’s learning more every day, getting stronger and more confident, and makes us delightedly happy.  And keeps us damn busy.  Hence, the need for extra sleep, for all of us.  And I’d do it again. 

Needless to say, Zach had plenty of fun during his week with his cousin.  How much?  Take a guess. 

However, now the house is empty again, Family Day has come and gone, and a new week is starting.  There’s a lot I could ramble about – the Chicano art exhibit, that weird piece of investment marketing I got, my heart scan test and the likelihood that I’m not harboring a major coronary that’s just waiting to happen…. But instead, I think it’s time to do a bit of slate-wiping, so to speak.  I need to take a moment and get clear (in a non-Dianetics sort of way).  So, I think I’ll offer up for your delectation at this, the dawn of another week, the story of a sunset that I still sometimes dredge up to enjoy when I want to smell clean air and remind myself of something entirely, utterly pure:

I’ve tried to figure out exactly when I saw it, but the details are more evanescent than was the moment itself.  I’m also not really sure specifically where it happened.  Mostly, I just remember that I saw it.  After all, that was the important part.

I’d been looking for it for some time, the way one looks for pots of gold at the foot of a rainbow or for angels when you see a shooting star.  It’s a legendary phenomenon, and I was enough of a cloudgazer to know of it and to have searched for it for years already.  I’d seen the shimmer of the red tide at night; I’d seen the ruddy glow of a towering lenticular at dusk.  I’d seen the perseid shower, sheet lightning, eclipses total and partial.  I’d seen sundogs and moon rings with their subtle spectral refractions.  But what I hadn’t seen was the superhero of celestial luminescence. I wanted to see the Green Flash.  And then, at some point around 1990, I did. 

It might have been ’89, actually, in the summertime. Kel and I drove up from LA to SF, exploring whether we could relocate there.  We learned on that trip that we couldn’t live anywhere else, but the key moment came well before we reached that robust conclusion in those boho precincts.  We’d taken the scenic route, Hwy 1 up the coast, so Kel could see more of what CA was all about.  It’s a long drive, full of high cliffs, wide vistas, and sharp turns that can make a person right queasy.  That’s about where we were at sunset – on a cliff over the ocean, in the middle of nowhere, needing to take a little break to let our stomachs settle after hours of hairpin 270s far above the swirling sea. 

We pulled off the highway at a wide shoulder.  There weren’t any people around; there wasn’t any traffic.  There wasn’t anything at all but our dusty little car, our road-addled selves, the cliff and the highway and the sea – into which the reddened sun was just starting to sink.  The sky was so blue it was almost purple, cloudless and crisp. 

“I think,” I told Kel, “we might see the flash.”

The green flash occurs at the moment that the sun is reduced to a single beam casting over the horizon.  If the air is clear and the horizon is flat and nothing else gets in the way, that one ray of white light will refract out into all the spectral hues.  But R-O-Y get absorbed back into the sky, and B-I-V soak down into the ground…. The only one you can see, for just an instant, is G: Green.  For a fraction of a second, the green flash lights the horizon – and then disappears with (or into) the sun that produced it.  I’d been waiting a long time for all the elements to come together, but this crystal evening I could feel my chance approaching.  Every indicator was propitious. 

We looked askance at the horizon, protecting our eyes’ sensitivity as the sun, blushing darker by the second, flattened itself into the sea.  The less sun there was, the more directly we could view it.  Eventually, when it was nearly gone, we both keenly watched it finish its descent, a daily spectacle so majestic that I almost never notice it on ordinary occasions.  But this was no ordinary occasion – we were standing at the edge of the world, peering into an uncertain future for possibilities too vast to grasp, sure only of the road under our feet, each other’s company, and a mote of pure light that shrank visibly before us.

I knew the crucial moment would soon be upon us.  I wanted to say something but no words came.  Instead, came the flash.  So quick, so clean, so piercing – an emerald of pure light.  It lit our faces, filled my eyes and washed clear my mind.  It was over in a fraction of a secondbut we’d both seen it, well and truly. 

“I saw it.”

“Me too.”

“Beautiful.”

“Amazing.” Then, without further commentary, we got back into the car and resumed driving, not so much refreshed as renewed.  We drove through the night.  A week later, we drove back south again.  And since then we’ve been all over the place.  Many years and uncountable miles have stacked up between that moment and my life now.  But though it had hardly lasted for the blink of an eye, that green flash still shines for me today.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Burger Meister

I went to L.A. yesterday for a site visit.  The trip was uneventful, with one notable exception: I’ve been jonesing for weeks for a big juicy burger, but one way or another it never came together.  That was probably so I’d truly appreciate the rich, authentic taste of my Cassell’s burger yesterday - the offices I was visiting were just a few blocks from this 60-year-old avatar of ground chuck preparation.  Did I enjoy it?  YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Later today I’ll head out to Walnut Creek for a heart scan.  Let’s see how much new cholesterol it picks up.  I know I’ve picked up a nice steaming double handful of it, my own self. 

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Major Announcement

I read on the wire services that Lance Bass (of erstwhile N’Sync fame) has announced that he’s gay.  Of course, his revellation is hardly unexpected - hell, his name is just one letter away from being a command to pierce butt.  However, in the wake of Lance’s big news, several other announcements have been forthcoming and I’m a-gonna make sure they get the attention they deserve:

* Generalissimo Francisco Franco Announces that He’s Still Dead
* Frosted Flakes Announce that They’re Great
* Planet Uranus Announces that It’s Mostly Gas
* Turmoil Announces New Address: The Middle East
* Proud Mary Announces that She Keeps On Burnin’
* Enjoyer of Gumballs Thanks Mickey
* President Bush Announces that He’s Firmly in Command

Here’s hoping your news is pre-digested for you all week long.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Top 40 from the Third Quartile

As the end of July creeps up on me like that pair of cheap boxers I wear the day before I do laundry, it occurs to me that I skipped my blogiversary last year.  I like to do a bit of retrospection every so often - to check back and see where I’ve been, whether it’s anywhere worth having gone and that sort of thing.  The first couple of years I was blogging, I memorialized this process with a “top 40” list - my favorite posts from the prior year.  Not the best ones, necessarily, or the ones that are most interesting or artistic or crap like that - just my favorite ones, the ones I most enjoyed rediscovering.  But in 2005, there was a lot going on and I just didn’t get around to it. 

Well screw that noise: I’ve gotten around to it now.  I’ll work up 2005-06 soon enough, but since my computer room is going to be a toddler’s bedroom for the next week while Delia and crew are visiting, I’m going to leave this for ya: here’s my favorite posts from my third year of blogging.  They’re old enough now to qualify as antiques, as far as the internet is concerned.  As for which: I notice that several of these posts got a bit scrambled after the various site changes I’ve had over the interim - many of the punctuation marks got turned into question marks.  I sort of wish I had time to fix them all, but I also sort of like the constant interrogatories.  They’re always asking you about what you’re reading.  As for which:

Chuckles’ Favorite Posts: August 2004 through July 2005!

circles from circles
underpass part II
underpass
burnin’ down the house
blue (heron) monday
the rock garden
good for the gander
my fabulous career
the look of love
memorable
repertory
glass all empty
ball boy
natal felicitations
see the thunder
curse of the oma
pt reyes in 9000 words
wednesday morning ride
red
a game of wenches
the harder they come
does this bug you?
stubs
death of the ghoul
light me up
shiver me timbers
tradition, turnips, and the meaning of life
a hug goodbye
tmi
the evanescence of coincidental holiness
land of the lost
warm up gear
capacious
this is your brain on law
suck the bone
music man
gnop
straight to the heart of things
little shop of fetishes
don’t toy with me

Don’t read them all in once place, and do please have a nice weekend.  I guarandamntee you that I will. 

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Long Playing

In a delightful change of Chucklehut pace, we’re getting ready for my sister to visit with her husband and daughter on Saturday.  They’re staying with us a week, during which time they’ll have the study as their guest room.  Since it’s where ol’ Hurlbutt Packrat, my desktop conduit to the ubernurt, lives, I don’t know what kind of updating capacity I’ll have, but fret not - there’s plenty of chuckle left in the hut, and I’ll catch you on the flip side if not before.

Speaking of plenty of (x) in the (y), I was pulling things together in the study a few weeks ago in anticipation of impending guestage, when I decided once again to tackle the closet.  Every few years I crack this closet open, remove tons of questionable surplussage from its depths, and then somehow a few years later it’s once again chokablok with scrap lumber, old copies of the Sears-Roebuck Wish Book, and what appear to be rhinestone-studded codpieces.  Anyway, it had to be re-cleaned yet again, goddamn it, so off I went.  This time it was a pretty straightforward job, though, much to my relief, and before long I had mostly finished the job.  It was then that I rediscovered an old shopping bag that I knew, before I peeked inside, held inestimable treasure: my old LPs.

You see, at one point (you MySpace whippersnappers may find this amusing) music was recorded on plastic, or even shellac, disks, which were played by dragging a tiny needle along a barely-less-tiny groove that ran around in a spiral hundreds of times before petering out at a blank space near the center.  (This is where we got both the phrases “get your groove on” and “petering out.") The device on which such items were played was a “phonograph,” and I had one.  I had several, actually, over the years, and at times I had hundreds of these “long playing” albums.  They rotated 100 times every three minutes and played for 22 minutes or so on a side; then you flipped them over and got a fresh 22 minute set of tunes.  Sweet! 

I had my phonograph hooked up to my stereo system for many years, but eventually I stopped using it.  Cassettes were easier to play, didn’t scratch, and took up less space.  Then CDs preempted all my analogue media.  Now I’m mostly relying on my ‘pod and the radio, and it’s been so long since I listened to my LPs that I’d forgotten I’d even kept a few of them. Because here’s the thing: more than any cassette and much more than any CD, I formed emotional attachments to some LPs.  Because of their large format, they often had eyecatching art, at which I’d stare vacantly for 22 minutes or so at a time, over and over again.  Some of them even had special features, like fold-open covers or decorative sleeves.  Sometimes they were just old and rare, which was possible with a technology that ran back to the 40s.  Anyway, I had a whole crapload of LPs and I really liked them.  Some I even loved, in a non-physical kind of way. 

When I finally put the phonograph in a box and stashed it in the closet, I got rid of a lot of LPs but I kept a select few - and with Evi coming soon, and my cleaning out the closet, I found them again.  I don’t plan to re-configure my sound system to be able to play them again, but I took a few minutes and went through the stack, reliving my experience of each of them.  Good times, people - and though I can’t bring you along on that particular recollective journey, I can give you the signposts with this list of THE LPS I STILL HAVE (in officially random order):

* The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony (nice pebbled cardboard cover)
* Pink Floyd: Relics (cartoon calliope cover art)
* Jethro Tull: Stand Up (original 1969 fold-open cover with a photo of the band that stands up)
* Randy Newman: 12 Songs (original 1970 cover)
* The Ventures: Let’s Go (original 1963 cover)
* Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick (original 1972 cover art with 11 page newspaper parody)
* Bob Dylan: Biograph
* Emerson Lake and Palmer: Tarkus (fold-open cover with cartoons)
* Best of Chess Blues (double LP)
* John Mayall: Jazz Blues Fusion (with Blue Mitchell) (original cover from 1972)
* Jethro Tull: Passion Play (fold-open cover with parody “program” for the Passion Play)
* Emerson Lake and Palmer: Brain Salad Surgery (fold-open cover with art by Geiger)
* Les Baxter: Soundtrack to “Hell’s Belles” (original cover of film soundtrack from 1969)
* Jethro Tull: This Was (original 1968 fold-open cover with concert photos)
* (The) Ventures in Space (original 1964 cover: “All of these unusual and other-worldly sounds have been created with musical instruments rather than electronic gimmicks")
* Rick Wakeman: The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth (fold-open cover)
* The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio (original cover from 1969 - a true landmark of jazz-blues fusion)
* The Blues Project: Projections (original 1966 cover)
* Moby Grape: Grape Jam (rare improvisational studio work; original 1968 cover)
* Tom Lehrer: That was the Year that Was (I have no shame - in fact, I still have several of these tracks memorized)
* Dr Demento’s Delights (original 1975 release - back when he was part of the counterculture)
* Eric Idle and Neil Innes: The Rutland Weekend Songbook (original 1976 cover)
* Bill “Silver Throat” Cosby: Bill Cosby Sings (serious rockin’ blues from the “I Spy” era; original 1967 cover with Bill in sombrero and handlebar moustache)
* Jethro Tull: Living in the Past (original 1972 fold-open cover with 8 pages of photos)
* Talking Heads: The Name of This Band… (2 LPs with photo sleeves)
* Ennio Morricone: Colonia Sonopa Originale del Film “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - with Italian liner notes and stills from the film)
* The Japanese Bach Scene (1969)
* Genesis: Foxtrot (foldopen cover with band photos)
* The Dickies: Dawn of the Dickies
* The Dickies: Incredible Shrinking Dickies
* Golden Throats (compilation of famous people desecrating famous songs)
* Papa John Creach and Friends (original 1971 cover; album features Slick, Garcia, and a host of other luminaries)
* Quincy Jones with Ray Charles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for “In the Heat of the Night” (original 1967 cover)
* Stravinsky: Firebird Suite (Stokowski conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1943 or ‘44 on three 78 rpm albums in a big portfolio with awesome art front and back of a giant about to be impaled through the forehead by a shining knight with a firebird)
* The Story of Old Mack (my favorite album from my earliest days, when I sort of looked like the kid on the cover)

It may not be much, but it’s plenty for me.  I don’t even need to play most of them.  It’s just nice to have them hanging around.  I hope they get along with my sister next week.  I’d hate to have to choose between them.

Monday, July 17, 2006

King of the Mountain

I work, as I never seem to tire of saying, in a pretty gritty environment.  It’s all blacktop around plazas abutting good-sized buildings, with cars and trucks and motorcycles and pedestrians swirling like platelets through urban arteries.  The sky is peppered with freshly-ungrounded aircraft, and the sun is often hidden from me as I march through the concrete and steel canyons.  From near or far this landscape is emphatically the work and the province of humankind.  If I ever see anything other than my own species, it’s a pigeon or a rat or some homeless dude’s dog.  Homo Sapiens rules the roost. 

Except: A month or so ago I left work to see telescopes and high-powered binoculars set up on tripods across the street from my building.  I followed their sightline and saw a smudge about fifteen stories up on an otherwise undistinguished façade.  They offered me a magnified peek and I took it.  Through the high resolution optics, clear as glass and 60x closer, was revealed a fuzzy little head.

“Peregrine?” I asked.

“Fledged two days ago,” the self-satisfied ornithologist beside me crowed.  I peeked again.  The top of the head was white, darker around the very prominent eyes.  It looked wild.  It looked right at home.

Since that day I’ve seen the ‘scopes every day or two, sometimes in the a.m., but mostly in the p.  Sometimes it’s one watcher; sometimes it’s an excited little clutch of ‘em.  But whether they’re there or not, I know, though I can’t see it, that I’m no longer alone at the top of the food chain.  The peregrines are canyon hunters, and it looks like they’re here to stay.  Keep your pigeons indoors, good people, and watch our for your weinerdogs.

The boy has finally fallen asleep, after nearly 3 hours of hysterical crying.  Damn but that sucks the energy out of a room.  We had a great weekend with multiple parties and exercise and sunny days in the park; I watched my favorite episode of Ascent of Man (yay relativity!) and
played some solitaire.  Zach is experiencing the joy of molaring and we’ve got a world of work to deal with before my sister and her clan show up at the end of the week.  Am I making excuses for being a lame blogger this week?  I don’t need to make excuses.  I’ll just loathe myself silently from a distance.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  Till the intensity passes, though, even if I don’t update as often as usual, I’ll cherish your memory in my heart.  There’s plenty of room; I just passed a cardiac stress test.  Yeah, that’s how it’s been lately - triumph in the midst of inconvenient exertions.  I’ll let you know how it all turns out.  Plus, there’s the legend of Boy Bawang and the SHNNING to share with you.  In the industry, they call that at “teaser.” I call it time for bed.  Later days, Ubernurts. 

Friday, July 14, 2006

Booty Restoration Project: 10 Movies for the Heartland

My experience with stolen goods (see below) notwithstanding, I’m a bit taken aback by the current fascination with piracy.  Pirates aren’t cute girlymen with kohl’d eyes and warm hearts; they are bloodthirsty villians who perform depradations so depraved that I can’t think of a good D word to describe how I feel about them.  Disney got it wrong.  The Indian Ocean is plagued even today with immoral men who use fast, light gunboats to take over tankers and cruise ships.  They don’t deserve a ride at the themepark, much less a big-budget trilogy with Johnny Depp trying to out-Tyler Durden Orlando “Kiss Me You Fool” Bloom.  Also, the Carribean has had enough trouble for a while, I think.  Hurricanes, Puerto Rican succession movements, Elian.... give them a break already.  Don’t kick an archipelago when it’s down.  I, for one, am outraged.  And for once, I’m gonna do something about it.

Hollywood, listen up. This isn’t like the time I kept drunk-dialing you at 4 am to ask where my clothes were - this time, I’m calling to help you out.  Amurka doesn’t need more movies glorifying a bunch of androgyno-erotic eevildoers.  We need to take a step back from the edge of the plank here and think up some films that can satisfy the national hunger for depictions of anti-social behavior, but don’t actually encouage our tender youth to pull up stakes, buckle their swashes, and start violating people’s most sacred personal liberties and property rights.  I’m not saying movies all have to be about the meet-up between the Dragon Tails and the My Little Ponies (though I think there’s a porno waiting to be developed there) - we can still have films that push the boundries of approved civilized behavior without going quite as far as discharging firearms into crowds of innocent pirates.  Let’s let “booty” mean what it meant in the 1970s, not the 1870s.  Anyway, let’s try.

And I understand, Hollywood, that sometimes it’s hard to think of new ideas for movies.  That’s why every ride in Disneyland with the exception of the Matterhorn has been turned into a movie, or is based on one.  (The Eiger Sanction doesn’t count, unless they’ve put a tiny George Kennedy face on those adorable Yeti dolls.) So I’m here, as the man says, to take the pressure off.  Here are some less-offensive offenses that can be made into hugely profitable blockbusting movies, plus the locations that will allow you to rack up huge travel budgets to transport audiences to exotic lands where such behaviors are imaginable.  Pirates in the Carribean?  Done to death, and politically incorrect.  But how about:

* Jaywalkers of the Tenderloin
* Loud Cell-Phone Talkers of the Sargasso
* Line-cutters of the Olduvai
* Spoliators of the Pine Barrens
* Guys-Who-Pretend-to-Find-Fingers-In-Their-Food of the Banlieu
* Meter-Feeders of Hoth
* Ding-Dong-Ditchers of the Van Allen Belt
* X-Mas-Decoration-Leaver-Uppers of the Outer Hebrides
* Toilet Paper Non-Replacers of the I-80 Corridor
* Drunk-In-Public-ers of the Back 40

You’re very welcome, Hollywood.  Next time I’ll expect a muffin basket.  You know what I mean.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Emperor’s Old Clothes

I needed a - something.  Something more than a shirt, but not quite a jacket - something for the sudden breezes and fogsnaps that wouldn’t bulk me up too much when the sun shone again and I had to lug it around.  I supposed they sold such things, but I really didn’t feel like shopping for one.  I guess I figured it would just show up in a natural process of needs-fulfillment.  As if the universe really worked like that.

Turns out, that’s exactly how the universe works - or how it worked then, anyhow.  Kel came home from work one night with sartorial booty (in addition to the booty she usually hauls around with her).  She works at a good-sized organization and I guess they had some sort of unclaimed objects repository where she’d gone browsing.  I think she got a desk chair, some dog toys - and the Marcucci shirt. 

This was an oversized garment of heavy fleece, with flap pockets and a substantial collar.  It was the color of wet sand, thatched in brown and grey with a simple, open plaid.  Wearing it was like wearing a sleeping bag, warm and comfortable and insulating.  I never much cared how it looked on me, or how I looked in it.  It kept me warm and I’d expended no effort whatsoever to obtain it.  I didn’t feel like asking questions about it. 

One thing about this garment did cause me pause, however - the return address.  Well, more of a phone number and a name: Marcucci.  These were imprinted on a small cotton strip that had been ironed into the collar.  It’s no mean feat to iron fleece without melting it, and someone had gone to a fair amount of trouble to print the damn things up in the first place.  The phone number was local.  Those two datashreds brought the orphan heritage of the shirt into my immediate awareness each time I wore it, and reified that otherwise anonymous owner who’d let it go however many years ago.

In fact, it has been years.  This I know because I’ve kept this shirt for three or four years or more myself.  I have no idea how long it had sat in lost-n-found before Kel liberated it, but the likelihood is, it had been quite some time.  Even as I found this garment very comfortable physically, my tenuous claim to it disconcerted me a bit on an ethical level.  Not so much as I’d do anything about it, of course - just enough to notice.  I’d call it a low-grade irk. 

I enjoy this shirt.  It’s easy.  It takes punishment.  It’s light, but warm and voluminous.  It hides stains.  It dries fast.  I have worn it frequently and gratefully.  The tan fleece shirt-jac: it works just fine - stolen or not. 

Cut to a few weeks ago: a local alt-rock station held a big concert in the park near our house, so we all trucked down to see Cake.  We got to the meadow where the concert was being staged 40 minutes before Cake took the stage, so we sat around just watching Zach learn how to walk.  It was a chilly, overcast day with fog thick enough to bead on my glasses.  Kel and Z were properly layered, but all I had was Mr Marcucci’s shirtjac - and I was doing fine.  My hands and face were cold; my arms and trunk, not at all.  I considered it a power performance by my own outerwear.

But I did notice something, in my 90 minutes or so out there: plaidlessness.  Though thousands of hip young people were thronging the meadow, I only saw three or four plaid shirts in that whole time, apart from my own.  I saw hoodies, pullovers, blazers and ponchos; all permutations of tees and tanks; jackets, shells and coats… and they were in solid colors.  Black, grey, navy; reds and browns; pale blues and forest greens… logos and pomo-meso-amer-asian designs abounded.  A big woven all-over pattern like mine, though - not so much.  Big time.  And they dudes who were wearing the plaid – they didn’t impress me as upstanding citizens, if you get my drift. 

So now I’m a bit self-conscious about the shirt-jac.  I wonder if I want to replace it at long last with something more contemporary, something of my own choosing.  I ask myself if I’ve grown unduly attached to it; riposte myself with whether I’m just trying to justify unnecessary commercial activity - buying stuff I don’t actually need for no reason but compulsive slavery to fashion. I do think I could do better in the open market.  I don’t know if I want to.  After pondering for long enough on these subtleties, I don’t even know if I care.

I know who could clear this up for me, of course. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, were I to call the Marcucci number ironed into the collar of the item in question, the phone would be answered by the person who ironed that label in the first place.  I’m picturing a matronly woman in her 60s or 70s, a proud and generous woman with a rigid sense of propriety and an absolute devotion to her family, on whose behalf she undertook even such mercies as the labeling project in anticipation of just such a call as I might make. 

I’d ask about a missing tan plaid shirt and she’d know exactly what I was talking about immediately; I’d be able to tell instantly from her reaction how the owner felt about his loss those many years prior.  I’d know if he’d let it go without a second thought or if a week didn’t go by when he didn’t wish he still had it.  Whether he had moved on, or whether he was still mourning the disappearance of the one garment that had made his life worth living.  He might need to be reminded that he’d ever even owned it.  He might cherish its memory with a searing flame of love forsaken.  I can’t know unless I call. 

But such a call would be fraught with peril and moral ambiguity.  First, I’d have to lie about where I got the shirt, and when - saying, for example, that I’d just picked it up.  I’d have to hope that this lie didn’t come back like all lies to bite me on the ass, but I just don’t think I could admit to keeping and wearing another man’s coat for four years - not to the man who owns it, anyway, and especially not to the hausfrau who’d lovingly maintained it for him.  It’s just not done. 

And however that conversation might turn out, it could only result in a loss for me.  If the owner wants it back, even after all my years of ethically-questionable use, I’ve lost something precious - either the shirt itself, or (if I refuse to return it) any real comfort I might take from its swaddling folds.  I wouldn’t be able to relax in it any longer.  It might keep me from being cold, but it could never warm me again.  And if Marcucci does not want it back, that’s even worse - that means that it wasn’t worth having in the first place. 

So instead I just let it hang in the closet, silently reproaching me.  And when the summer fog blows in all crisp and blustery I still put it on - but I try not to think about it.  I ignore the outmoded style, and I blot from my mind the identifying label.  I don’t think I’m a slave to fashion, but I might just be a slave to guilt. 

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Bits and Pieces

Once again, the many words that promiscuously congregate in my noggin are taking a back seat to some intense images to which I’ve recently exposed myself.  Howzabout I share a bit of that with you this morning, and I’ll see later on whether I’ve written any essays worth your time to read sometime in the undefined future.

For example, we recently took a visit to Ft Funston, where voluptuous duned cliffs tower over the ocean.  This used to be an army base, where rifled cannon were able to fire 16” shells 25 miles out to sea.  The old gun emplacement now anchors an observation deck, but the steel-and-concrete construction has weathered really well over the last 60 years or so.  Here’s a bit of the iceplant dunes, and a nice close view of the steel shield over the old emplacement.

Saturday we took a jog through the park and then went out to IKEA for 90 minutes of high-powered shopping, including some actual purchases and some research for a future in which we get a round dining table and a little table and chair set for Zaq.  For the time being we got some replacement mirrortiles and a bit of lighting for the monkey’s room - maybe something he’s less interested in shimmying up than that stale old torchiere.  Good times, people.  Till the boy blew a gasket, anyway, but you’ll have that.  He was pretty sugar-fried, as was I. 

And why would that be?  We’d visited Vik’s Chaat House in the west Berkeley flats beforehand.  Vik’s is a big, fun place to gorge on excellent cheap Indian food, and we did our best there but after three big tasty entrees we weren’t quite able to eat all four of our desserts, even with Zak helping.  So our shopping trip was a bit… blurry for me.  I got over it eventually, though, and in honor of the Ikea trip we watched Fight Club on saturday night.  Mmmm, violently relaxing. 

Sunday morning Kel went to a brunch and took the child, leaving me free to reinstall our new new printer (the old new printer had a hardware problem and HP sent us a replacement), vacuum most of the house, mop the kitchen floor, clean up in the study, do some laundry, and hang some stuff on the walls.  In particular, I hung a painting by my paternal grandmother next to the window in the study; it’s a painting I’ve always liked and found very provocative.  I never met Delores, but this one canvas makes me think she might have been an interesting person to have known. 

It’s nice, anyway, to have her hanging around now. 

And on the other side of the grandparent scene, I stuck the little green lady up to the wall above the new new printer.  My maternal grandfather had a bigger version of her, and she always freaked us all out a little - especially when he got so anxious about who’d be inheriting her.  Well, I dodged that bullet but then mom found me a mini-version in Portland, and I rather prefer it.  Here she is, watching me at my keyboard with Nestor Netsuke, the little dude with the mellow ‘tude. 

Finally, we also finally got the ranma stuck on the wall over the bed.  It’s been more than a year that we’ve had it sitting around, and a month or so that I’ve had the hand-hammered brackets wherewith to install it.  As promised sometime in the murky past, here’s a few shots of the whole shebang.  (Please bang gently.) (and I don’t know why the thumbnails aren’t working but tough noogies you gotta clik thru to see’em, I’m done messing with it.)

This is about all I’ve got for now.  There’s plenty of words to be shared, but I can’t think of many of them right now.  I keep hearing awesome stuff to share, but not remembering it for more than 30 seconds - and not writing it down so I never think of it again, except to think that I forgot something.  Speaking of which, I forgot, I’m done.  Catch ya later. 

Friday, July 07, 2006

unguarded

The store was big, just like all the others identical to it across the continent.  The air outside, cold and a little moist, startled us as we got out of our car in the vast macadam sea of the parking lot.  We approached the broad glass doors with their automated motion sensors and let them usher us into the protected realm of the retail cornucopium.  The portals welcomed us with a quiet hiss, conveying assonantly that we’d entered a controlled, complete, hermetic space, totally distinct from the clammy wilds from which we’d late arrived. 

Such assertions, by humans or by automatic doors, rarely ring true, so I immediately started looking for the gouge in the veneer - the sliver of human truth that had not yet been subsumed by the prefabricatred environment surrounding me. And there it was, just inside the doors, immediately in front of me:

The security guard was wearing his security garb: blue slacks and black running shoes, with a blue overshirt that tried to make up in pockets, straps and epaulets what its wearer lacked in actual authority.  He was midway between five feet and six, average build, verging on chunky with the onset of middle age but still a petit man.  His hair was cut neat and short and he coiffed it slickly back; his small cheap sunglasses reflected the tube lights overhead and his tidy little moustaches seemed only to accentuate the feminine smallnesss of his lips.  He was stationed by the doors so he could greet us as we entered and keep us honest on our way out.  However, at that moment he was fulfilling neither of those duties.  He was just trying to make a little time.

The object of his attention was a junior member of the sales staff.  She wore regulation shirt and pants and nametag, but not the standard unflattering red vest.  Her face was searingly beautiful, doe-eyed and bee-stung and drenched in the most enticing kohls and rouges; her figure was lithe and tight and supple.  She made her tacky retail uniform look good, and when she bent over to adjust the straps of her sandals she coyly revealed a pair of tattoo kinkywings extending across her deeply tanned sacrum.  She looked fine, and she knew that the security guard knew it. 

As we entered the store I saw her walking across the entry foyer from the returns area toward the glittering displays of the electronics department.  He stood squared off toward the sliding doors, just a few yards off her trajectory, his hands resting on his hips and his pecs inflated.  After she stopped directly in his line of sight to tweak her toestraps, a casual flick of her lush slutty hair as she passed him right by got him off the blocks; he swiveled toward her, called out to her:

“Hey, I pulled in that stack of carts for ya.”

She’s a stockgirl; he probably outranks her, technically.  He’s also a man in his 30s, I’d guess, and she’s a kid, and he’d like to think he should be calling the shots here.  How it’s really going down, though, is he’s doing her scut work, and all he gets in return is a glance over the shoulder and a bored, perfunctory “thanks.” She continues vacantly along toward the CDs, her hips switching freely in their red polyester trousers.  He’s got to stay by the front doors.  He pulls his gaze from her retreating peaches and resquares his stance, adjusts his beltbuckle, and clenches his jaw till I can hear his molars creak.  We walk on in.  He remains at his station, staring through smoked glass at acres of blacktop. 

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Freedom To Lounge; Plus The Women Who Want Me

Over the past four days, I’ve had three point five off work.  I’ve shared a few crumbs of my delightful life with you already, but there’s a lot I left out.  Just to pique your envy, here’s a few other experiences I experienced in the last 96 hours (keeping in mind that I had to work a half-day on monday):

* Discovery Museum with the curious, strongwalking Zach
* Conservatory of Flowers with the whole fam-damily (plus butterfly exhibit and running into friends there)
* Fort Funston family cliffside walk, complete with hang gliders
* World Cup Soccer (TiVo recorded 90 minutes of regulation time but did not record the 30 minutes of overtime, in the 29th minute of which Italy reportedly scored twice against Germany in the Axis Powers Bowl)
* Pizza supper with the family at Orgasmica, dining on their indulgent oriental floorcushions with multiple pints of excellent homebrewed beer
* Delicious Independence Day Elk Sausages with sweet potato fritters
* Tasty Thai take-out supper shared with young son, who seems already to have a deep appreciation for yellow curry potatoes (sad sidelight: restaurants that have closed in my ‘hood include the second-closest and truly excellent Thai place, the closest pho place, and the viet-sandwich-and-french-dessert place next to Buffalo Burger)
* Ranma installation - it looks better than I’d even expected, and I had high hopes
* Fun email from my mom who’s singing in churches in Italy
* New Venture Brothers episode, and a damn good one too
* Loading another hour’s worth of family video into the CPU for impending assembly into a video CD for the gramparents
* Running before dawn in the dark park
* Two weird vivid dreams that I can still remember pretty clearly
* Cooking fresh fava beans properly and loving them

Now that’s a pretty full few days, and I didn’t even include the manifold household maintenance issues or my naps or certain other recreations.  Because I’m a man of goddamn mystery, that’s why.  Now eat your favas and shuddup about it already.

But you remain unsatisfied.  I didn’t post any photos of the mounted ranma, nor of the stroll on the cliffs; there are no links to the museum or the conservatory or Pizza Orgasmica ("we never fake it"); and you know you’ll never get any of those fabulous elk sausages.  What a ripoff.  Well, I can’t stand to leave you grousing like so many preschoolers locked in the cloakroom over the long holiday weekend.  Let me rephrase that: I can stand leaving you, but I can’t stand the grousing.  I don’t even particularly like grice, and they can’t help it.  But you whiners have got no excuse.  However, I know better than to think I can shut you up just by asking Tinkerbell to smack you one, so: Here’s another list that might leave you less curious, or at least, less curious with questions that can profitably be directed to me:

I have a small handful of email accounts.  One was, for years, my primary account, but now is mainly used for signing up with various on-line marketers and retailers, for getting emails from my extended family (who can’t be bothered to update my entry in their address books), and for receiving spam.  Lately a lot of my spam has concerned provocatively-described females being made available for my delectation.  I delete these messages without reading them and block the senders, since I figure any woman who finds her men through unsolicited emails may not really be a good match for me.  I suppose most people dump these emails unread, as I do.  That may be why the marketers are resorting to increasingly creative adjectival usage in their attempts to get me to check out the goods.  In one recent day, these are the adjectives that were used in the “re:” lines of my spam to describe the “girls” or “women” being offered up to me to elicit my functions for various ilicit functions:

* Beauteous
* Enchanting
* Youngest Enchanting
* Youngest Delightful
* Charming
* Ravishing
* Russian Adorable
* Lovely
* Esthetical
* Aesthetical
* Killing
* Brilliant
* Bonny
* Comely

Far be it from me to be a Bonny Comelyately, but I shudder to think what a man looking for a “killing” girlfriend actually has in mind.  I’m going to stick with using the ubernet just for making my Nigerian pipeline investments and buying my cheapp rx droogs.  I’ll hone my aesthetics on my own time.  I’m brilliant that way. 

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Parkrunners; and The North Beach Revisitation

Happy day, blogland!  For those of you for whom Monday is not a holiday, you have my sincere condolences.  This includes myself, as I have a half-day of work Monday, which is all I usually have.  So I guess I get half a condolence, which is, I guess, a condo.  Whaddaya know, I’m a property owner.  I thought it would be more satisfying, but then again, what is?

Friday, as I think I mentioned, I had a quick trip to L.A.  It went well - I got to drive a car I was curious about (the Chevy HHR, which is more fun from the outside than from the inside), didn’t get lost, ate a healthy lunch for a goddamn change, and got done quick enough to catch a flight home 90 minutes earlier than I thought I would.  But with all this wonderousness and fabulosity, there were two moments that really stood out for me - bookends to my day, occurring at just about the same spot about twelve hours apart.  Oh, and in case you didn’t think you’d find out what they were, I’m a-gonna tell you right now:

5:30 am: I’m heading to the airport, as quick as I can.  The flight is in an hour and the airport is half an hour away under the best possible circumstances, which I shouldn’t be counting on.  It’s dark; dawn has barely bestirred herself, and the sky is gunmetal blue.  I’m taking the shortest, quickest possible route - through the park.  The eastern part of the park is highly groomed and manicured, a real victorian folly.  And as I’m gunning the little soob up towards the Conservatory, I see a solidary figure trotting along the lawn.  I’ve already seen a few people running or walking dogs in the damp gloom, but this looks like a dog without an owner.  My old SPCA training kicks in and I scan the shadows for this dog’s person, momentarily concerned for its welfare… and then, noticing no one and starting to get anxious for it, I take a closer look.  This pup has a very energetic, light-footed trot.  Its head is up and alert, but dips frequently to taste the scent of the turf.  Its tail extends with cool relaxation and its body is lean and tough and tan.  This is no dog.  It’s a coyote, and a good sized one too.  I have nothing to worry about as far as he’s concerned.  It’s the feral cats in the grove by the museum who should be anxious, not me.  I’d been tense and preoccupied as I raced along, but this wild being reminded me at the very outset of my day to keep myself under control.  Tension doesn’t solve problems.  If things ever actually become a matter of life or death, control is the one thing I’ll need most of all.  So, thanks, coyote.  Hope you found what you were looking for.  You certainly pointed me in the right direction.

6:30 pm: I’ve gotten home and it’s turned into a really nice day.  I can’t remember getting home from work so early, with so much energy and sunlight to burn, so I decide to take a run in the park.  I’m pounding along, feeling neither strong nor pathetic, just sort of keeping time with my music and waiting for the endorphins to kick in.  I watch other joggers and the many pedestrians as they stream past me and each other - the tourist families, the buddhist monks in saffron robes, the various exercisers with their various levels of fitness.  There are some I know I’ll pass once more as I turn to go the other way back home, and some I’ll never lay eyes on again.  Some inspire me to run a little faster or to forego the break that my lungs are begging me to take. Some make me feel as if I’m exceptionally fit.  Some make me feel as if I’m a gastropod on a saltlick.  It’s quite a crowd there in the park on Friday evening.  But the one guy I really remember is the one who crossed my path just about where I’d seen the coyote that morning.  He was shirtless and wore no earphones; he ran in a pair of cut-off dungarees and grimy running shoes, slim and pale and sweat-shimmering in the lowering light.  He ran hard.  His face seemed very serious.  His hair was ridiculously serious: it was shaved in a mohawk that had been carefully sculpted into several stiff spikes that bobbed at least six inches over his head.  So much work, to impress the rest of us runners that he was tougher and more stylish than we were.  There’s a lesson in perspective right there.  Anyone who spikes his hair to go running on a summer evening in the park, sees the world very differently than I do. 

Speaking of seeing the world as I do, today Kel and Z and I went out to North Beach for a bit of a stroll and some tasty suds.  We parked, as is our wont, easily and conveniently, and strolled among a few side streets before taking our traditional promenade along Boulevard Cristobal Colon, or Columbus Avenue.  It amuses me that this renowned navigator is known in his homeland of Italy by the same name as we here know our lower tract, but those were simpler, more alimentary times.  (my dear watson.)

Next thing we know, we’re across the street from a little sheetmetal workshop, which is to say, a little shop where sheetmetal is worked, and also, a little shop made of sheetmetal.  In the mid-afternoon sun it looked pretty damn cool.

A few streets down we found ourselves in front of one of my most favorite shops, which I’ve never visited during business hours so I can only imagine how it smells inside.  Here’s a hint: they don’t sell purses.

We soon navigated back to the endpoint of our perigrinations, returning whence we’d parked our little car next to a defunct moviehouse that’s now blocked off with plywood panels and festooned with street art. 

The old theater is just up the block from the Rogue Alehouse, where I was delighted to negotiate a few gift certificates for a beer or three (british bitters and american amber for me, and a very rich chocolate stout for kel).  As we rested and imbibed, Zacharias caught up with business in a breathtaking display of juvenile multitasking.

Then we came home and did housework and got a couple ranmabrackets installed above our bed and generally let the day drift into quietude.  There are many more details of the weekend I could share but you’ve got better things to do than punish yourself with tales of Lena Horne’s performance of Rocky Racoon, or the baked goods at Stella, or the sweet Argentinian movie we watched.  However, I will leave you with this image of a hotel sign I recently mentioned hereabouts.  I tried to catch it before the sky was so dark, but no dice. 

That’s enough for now, I think.  That “vacancy” sign makes me sleepy.  See you a little later in the week, and here’s hoping your 4th is full of benign pyrotechnics and the kind of freedom that’s worth fighting for.