Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Weekend Wrapup: Tri-Partate Version

Crap, it’s Tuesday?  What the… oh yes, the three-day Marmoreal day weekend.  These long weekends are, by tradition, opportunities for me to fritter away my leisure time so I can look back afterwards with self-recrimination for failing to take full advantage of my available recreative options.  NOT SO THIS WEEKEND: I actually got to party party party, and here’s a brief rundown from one who is, quite literally, in run-down briefs as he types this:

Saturday: shopping on Clement at New May Wa and Haig’s, which always puts me in a good mood – exotic produce and nice cheap spices a-plenty, plus running into a neighbor on the sidewalk, which just makes the street-shopping experience more fulfilling for me.  Then, later, a small party with a few dear friends – of six adults in the room, four of us were classmates in college, which is an increasingly rare situation for us these days and a very refreshing throwback.  Jackie made a huge pot of amazing bbq-beef spaghetti sauce, of which I rather (substantially) overindulged; also, I made a now-famous chop salad that was so popular I’ll share the details:

Romaine – chopped into ½” strips (don’t strip the leaves off the head and you can do this in seconds)
Carrots – julienned (once again, get a mandoline and this takes no time at all)
Green Papaya – julienned (see above re: mandoline)
Yellow Pepper – cut into ½” strips and then into easily-munched thirds
Raw Corn off the cob
Scallions
Enoki mushrooms (the long skinny ones)

For a dressing, I got a nice lemon vinegar at Haig’s and blended it with cayenne, salt, dry marjoram, dry thyme, dry mint, ground mustard seed, ground dry ginger, and black pepper, then shook it in a mason jar with olive oil.  It totally rocked.  YES IT DID. 

Oh and Jackie had both brownies and chocolate cookies for dessert.  They were equally decadent, and I ate more than I could count. 

Sunday: Asian Pacific Heritage day at the Discovery Museum.  Z had a great time, as always, throwing little trains and crabs hither and yon till we dragged him away from the trucks for a performance – which he resented till a dozen kids strode out in karate uniforms to the dulcet, bone-rattling sounds of We Will Rock You.  They proceeded to do an excellent 15-minute tai kwon do demonstration, with some particularly impressive grade-school girls who really know how to kick and scream (with appropriate funky soundtracks, of course – my favorite was the Enter the Dragon theme, with original Bruce Lee howling).  Z went instantly from whining and fussy to openmouthed gaping.  Once the demonstration ended, the crowded site was chock-full of small, highly-energized children screaming and kicking at everything they saw.  Good times, people. 

Then, supper at M & C & E’s place, which was, as always, profoundly delicious.  Beloved old friends, and some very cool new ones, led to some fun conversations and enthusiastic imbibement of aged Spanish wines and Kentucky whiskies.  Mitch’s menu was, as I recall, a salad of arugula with scallop ceviche and pan-fried prawns, followed by roast pork (with pepper and apple?), brocollini, and a superb pumpkin risotto.  Dessert was Bi-Rite banana ice cream and freshly-baked spice cake.  He outdoes himself every damn time I see him.  The mind boggles. 

Bringing us to Monday, and a trip to the warehouse closing sale at Fumiki, where I got two free “surplus” panels suitable for nailing to a wall just as they goddamn are: one in gold-leaf with black-line calligraphy and paintings - a landscape on one side, and cranes in flight on the other; and one little wabi-sabi tansu door with elaborate rusted hardware in a vaguely anthropomorphic pattern.  This led into naptime, and then a bbq at my cousin’s family’s place in the east bay.  The occasion was the completion of the new second floor of their formerly-tiny and now palatial house, and more power to them – they did a great job and finished it in only seven months.  At least 100 of their closest friends turned the house-warming into a how-swarming, clearly demonstrating how efficient the planning was – lots of little alcoves for catching up with old and new friends, but no bottlenecks (except for those on the many thoughtfully-provided malt beverages distributed conveniently about the facilities).  The other guests were really nice, friendly people – plus, many of them brought great pot-luck additions to the chicken, dogs and burgers Billy was incessantly churning out of the big grill in the backyard.  Mine was marinated fava and tofu – sort of a fafu salad.  Tasted better than it sounds, honestly. 

Z was shepherded during these festivities by his 13-year-old cousin (technically, third cousin) who will also be looking after him this coming Friday when we go to a party thrown by her mom (my second cousin) and soon-to-be stepdad, for the express purpose of picking a mountain-dew based cocktail to be used for the toast at their upcoming wedding.  We’ve got a few working theories for a submission, but if you’ve got any suggestions, I’m listening. 

This week will feature much to be done and not too much time to do it.  I have a nice wad of stuff I’d like to post, and more yet to be written. Let’s see what I can accomplish.  After all, there’s three and a half days till my next party. 

Friday, May 25, 2007

Long Story Short, Short Story Long

Because I am a decent, caring person who wouldn’t want you wasting time on productive activities or with your loved ones, here are a few increasingly-lengthy items to help keep you occupied on the cusp of yet another three day weekend:

1) Quiz: The television series LOST makes frequent reference to a mysterious series of numbers.  What significance does the following series have to the just-aired season finale? 
7 16 5 7 5 5 9 7 10 12
(solution at the beginning of the “extended” portion of this post)

2) Watching television recently I had to click TiVo off FF to make sure I was correctly seeing what I thought I saw: a commercial for a television series that is itself based on an unrelated commercial campaign.  GOOD FREAKING GOD.  The Paleolithic mascot of some insurance company’s ad campaign is now starring (with his prognathic confreres) in his own sitcom.  What can I say but thank goodness?  Now if they could just figure out a way to siphon money out of my bank account while I piss away my precious allotment of time on this planet watching this derivative dreck, the cycle would be complete.  Does anybody remember when the Transformers were just a cartoon? 

3) Just because I wouldn’t want you to be deprived of foolishness and nonsense during the upcoming extended period of office-closure, here’s a chewy wad of my patented discursive onanism, or narrative indulgence, or fictive blather, or whatever.  Anyway, it’s one of those stories I sometimes find that I’ve written, and as usual, I have no idea where it’s going.  Anyone who can tell me what happens in the next, oh, 230 pages – I’m listening.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Public Safety Announcement: Autobondage

In a compelling example of synergistic snark, I’d been working on a bit of a listy thing for a few days when I read THIS essay by one of the ‘sphere’s more profound commentators.  Mr. A’Plenty has turned his ‘tude toward the now-ubiquitous phrase, Clickit or Ticket.  He claims that didn’t know what it meant.  This strikes me as equally probable as Monica Goodling’s “That other guy did it,” or that story about using your cell phone to turn off your car alarm.  But anyway.

My point is, I knew what those Clikit signs meant when I first saw them.  However, I never really liked them, from a literary standpoint.  At the least, I thought that this phrase should have been one of several mottos defending public safety on the open roads.  Goodness knows it’s an important issue.  Why should we leave it to a single catchphrase?  Hell, I figured, I could come up with a whole raft of slogans, along the line of Burma Shave ads or something. 

So, what the hey – here they are: Alternatives for the Click It or Ticket campaign:

· Strap It or Slap It
· Stow It or Blow It
· Engage It or Enrage It
· Invest It or Arrest It
· Supply It or Deny It
· Bind It or Reminded
· Restrain It or Explain It
· Insert It or Exert It
· Expound It or You’re Grounded
· Invest It or Arrested
· Align It or Fine It
· Buckle It or Truculent
· Geist-Zeit It or Cite It
· Extirpate It or Incarcerate It
· Please Use Your Goddamn Seatbelts

America’s Highways: You are most welcome.  Coming soon: my list of “or” ultimatums.  There’s so much to list, and so little time to list it…

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Good Enough for Government Work

Just as a counterpoint to the grousing below, here’s a quick rundown on some of the really good stuff from this past weekend:

* Catching up with 24 and the Sopranos, and being that much closer to being out of first-run thrall for the summer! 

* TWO-NAP SATURDAY.  ‘Nuff sed.

* A solid jog in the park on Saturday (between naps).  I don’t do it often enough and it felt better than I even expected.  Excelsior!

* Bay to Breakers - getting up and out with Z and K to walk three blocks to the park and meet our dear friend Jackie (and her delicious home-baked cookies) for an hour of watching the intersection of athletic expression and freak-flag flying.  My favorite costumes were Waldo and his girlfriend, who was dressed in a big red arrow and jogged by his side, shouting “Found him!” Z loved the balloons, the carnival atmosphere, and the helicopters and biplanes that buzzed overhead; he didn’t even bat an eye at all the naked people.  The one thing that was weird for the weirdness that is B2B was that I didn’t see any floats - no rolling kegs on red wagons, no tiki bars dragged by teams of sweat-glazed slaves, nothing like any of that.  The only piece of wheeled furniture I saw was a little cart that looked like it should have been a kegtote but actually just said “Obama 08.” Our conclusion was, if they were smart, it would have been both.

* Going out at night to snap a time-exposure photo of the giant purple head, and getting a decent shot despite some technical challenges: there’s a streetlight that flickers on and off every 90 seconds or so with unflattering light, so the process needed to be timed to that cycle; also, my blasted tripod seems to have run out of cialis and is now all floppy at it’s upper portion so I had to hold the camera in place atop it by hand for a 30 second exposure.  It was also very challenging to get the focus right.  Whine whine whine.  I like the photo anyway.  It counts as a “good weekend thing,” and here it is:

(turns out it’s a 6-month installation from the black rock collective, from the burning man festival.  yeah, I can see that.)

* Redeeming my iTunes gift certificate from Kel and getting a nice new tranche of music, including some old Elvis Costello and TMBG that I have not heard since my cassette days, and some new (to me) music by The Devil Makes Three.  Google it yourself, good people.  Fun stuff.

* Deciding on a whim to get a traditional Korean supper at our favorite place, Han Il Quan, and then finding two (!) tourbusses full of Korean tourists parked outside waiting for seats.  Damn!  How will we find a delicious bowl of dol sot be bim bop under these circumstances?  We had to walk almost five blocks before we got to a nice new place, Um Ma Son, for exactly that.  Fairly modern in décor, but traditionally attentive and polite.  It’s no Han Il Quan (that place totally rocks), but it’s a good fallback.

* Going out to Crissy Field for a toddlerstroll on Sunday afternoon and having a nice time in the warm sun, and fortuitously noticing posters for a photo exhibit at the Officers’ Club – giant “environmental portraits” by Robert Cameron, whose name I recognized from several of his “Above” books that I’ve either owned or slavered over.  The exhibit was really astonishing and well worth the price, which is “free.” Come to SF and chekkit out.

* Catching the 399th and 400th episodes of the Simpsons, and – despite being disappointed in most of the recent episodes I’ve caught – really enjoying them.  When they hit their stride they’re still as funny as anything on television.  TCBY = “that container of botulized yogurt”?  Genius!

I think that’s all I need to share about good stuff this weekend, though there was more, oh yes, much more that I just won’t be divulging, because it is the policy of this administration not to comment on an ongoing investigation.  Or such.  Just take it from me, it was a good time.  And since I don’t have a better place to say it, I recently enjoyed a tasty box of botan candy – those delicious Japanese rice-gummies with quadruple fun: a cool box, edible rice-paper inner wrappers, tasty chewy candy, and this cheerful fellow as a prize:

double-horny dragondude!  Finally, a nickname with street cred!  I think he’s a temporary tattoo, and I am open to suggestions where he should be applied.  I’m thinking, if I could sneak it onto some stranger on the bus, it would probably be best – but I’m still working out the logistics. 

That will be all.  Good day to you, sir.  I SAID GOOD DAY. 

Monday, May 21, 2007

Manly Rant: Feather-Bested

I’m probably a spoiled whiner, but those goddamn feathers are driving me batty.  My wife doesn’t care, so I’m going to complain at you, blogsylvania.  You probably don’t care either, but sometimes a man has got to vent his batting.

Maybe I’m just a little princess – too highborne and refined to endure substandard luxuries.  Then again, I’ve put up with some awfully crude accommodations in my day.  I guess it’s a late-onset condition: “type 2 princessitis,” if you will.  And if you won’t, I will.  I’m a goddamn princess and I reserve the right to bitch.  And so:

The bed, it is adequately comfortable.  I wouldn’t go for another pillowtop again but one lives and one learns.  The memory foam mattress topper is getting a little tired but remains serviceable nonetheless.  The sheets, I hardly notice – a sufficient endorsement under the circumstances.  Of course, there’s the blanket: a heavy length of soft wool, kind to the skin and thermally retentive.  Sure, it’s meant for a narrower crib than my king-sized set-up, but I don’t need it dangling off the sides anyway; it fits neatly across the top of the bed and covers every place I might think to repose myself therein, and that’s plenty good enough for me. 

And then there’s the comforter.  And I realize that this is going to sound picayune to some people but I have got to get this off my chest: those goddamn featherprickers are making me nuts.

It’s a nice big comforter that drapes generously over both sides of the bed, dusty green on one side and olive on the other – two subtle, soothing hues.  It’s deeply battened into large rectangles, and absolutely loaded with high-loft down.  But let me ask you: is down supposed to have all those blasted stickernubs? Or am I dealing with a defect in the feathers?  In the fabric of the comforter?  Or is it, in fact, a problem with the very fabric of the universe itself?

Or is it me?

It’s probably me.  It goes like this:

I get into bed and roll naturally into my preferred somnolent positioning, carefully pulling the sheet and blanket to the appropriate clavicular height, ensuring that they’re taut and unwrinkled – not unlike myself.  I give the comforter a final adjustment, smoothing it with my drowsy palms – and as I complete my final pass, I feel a tiny wiry protrusion drag beneath my hand.  I search for it with my fingertips, with both hands; I sit up and look for it, disturbing my carefully arranged linens, but I see nothing. I throw myself back into the sheets knowing only too well already the circumstances under which I’ll find it again.

Late, late at night – very early in the pre-dawn morning – I turn in my sleep and sense wrongness in the universe.  Something is calling me back to the world of the wakeful, and it’s my own blasted bedding. My hand has fallen outside the covers; where it rests on the comforter, a tiny needling prods my flesh.  In the darkness, with my eyes closed, it feels quite significant, but as my fingers begin to stumble, seeking the source of my irritation, I already know it’s objectively tiny.

Most times I can’t even find it as I pinch at the fabric and run my fingertips along the soft cotton, hoping I’ll rediscover what’s awakened me: the butt-end of a small feather, sharper than envy, that’s just peeked far enough out of the comforter to catch my attention. The longer I search for it, the more awake I become, till I’m sitting up and flailing at the puffy covers with both hands.  When I re-discover it, or another one like it (by this point, any feather will satisfy me), it usually takes me a few tries to catch the tiny tip of the shaft of the feather between my thumb and forefinger; sometimes I need to catch it from under the fabric and work it out a little farther before extraction can be successfully achieved.  But I achieve extraction of that malicious, malignant feathery fiend, one way or another.  You can count on that.

So there I lie, wakeful and triumphant, a hair-thin feathershaft in one hand, strumming its rapier tip with one finger of the other.  The whole thing is only an inch long, if not less. Even in the magnifying darkness I am shamed that I’ve let such a tiny mote get the better of me.  I let it fall to the bedside floor, where, as expected, it lands silently, giving me no satisfaction in my disposal of it.  It just goes away as if it never existed, and it takes me a while to fall back to sleep.

The next morning I gather from the hardwood the evidence of my trial by feather, and proudly display it to Kelly.  “See?,” I tell her. “I pulled it from the comforter!  It woke me up!” She scoffs and returns to her morning, as careless of the feather as she’d been the night before.  It didn’t wake her up from her sleep; why should it slow her down in the daytime?  And more to the point, why the hell am I such a pansy about it?

I think it’s time I grew a thicker skin, or just became a bigger man.  I shouldn’t let a tiny fluffy feather ruin my nights like this. I hope it happens soon.  Kel’s perfectly happy with the comforter and we’re not getting a new one in the foreseeable future.  It’s up to me to be the master of my feathery domain.  Some things a man has got to do for himself. 

Friday, May 18, 2007

The Captain, Revealed - plus Big Weird Head

Let’s have a quickie, cuz it’s friday and I’m busy but so wonderfully full of bogus nonsense to share:

I had to get fingerprinted and go to a CORI training today.  That’s the Criminal Offender Record Information training, not the Feldman-Haim thing.  I don’t need training on the Feldman-Haim thing.  I’m as good at that as I want to be. 

While I was being fingerprinted, I asked if people sometimes don’t have fingerprints and the technician said, “sure, you had three people here today so far that had no prints.” I need to find these people.  I have jewel heists to plan, dammit. 

On the CORI documentation that they made me fill out to get access to all kinds of dirty secrets about malefactors, I was asked for various bits of personal information, which I provided.  I was also asked for my alias.  Wow, I thought: Does this mean I can sign up for one? I’ve been sadly lacking in aliasage for longer than I care to admit, so I asked if I could put down “Captain Midnight."* They told me, no; then, they belittled me.  I bet they all had great aliases and they call each other by them when they go to their little alias parties that birth-name losers like me don’t even get to hear about.  Pseudonomic bastards. 

Alias denial embitters me.  However, this cheers me right back up again:

- for those of you who like to get ahead, visit JFK drive in GG Park, where you can find this turf-sniffer.  He appeared mysteriously last weekend; the staff at the DeYoung museum down the street a few hundred yards disclaim knowledge of his provenance. However, his magnificent weirdness defies ignorance.  I dare you not to notice him!  Because, you know, he’s probably checking you out pretty carefully… I mean, look at the size of those eyeballs!

I’ll have more to share once I upload a few dozen random pictures of feathers, finish my short story (not so short any longer, really), and get my CORI clearance.  I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  After all, Cap’n Midnight is all about getting the proper clearances. 

*what, you think I’m kidding?  I’m not kidding.  The cap’n doesn’t kid about aliases.  Especially not his own.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Training Wheels

Tomorrow is Bike to Work Day here in Fran Skamdisco.  I love riding my bike (though I accidentally typed “bile” first, which might be a Freudian thing, you’ll have to ask my mother); just this morning I put in 15 hard minutes on the stationary recumbent at the gym.  However, I have not actually gotten onto my real outside-on-the-streets bike in a very long time.  So tomorrow is a perfect opportunity for me to break that mold, non?  Eh, non.  Just as I’ve missed BTWD every year since I’ve had a chance to do it, I’m going to miss it again this year.  And I’ll probably continue to miss it in the future. 

And Why, you ask, am I always missing BTWD?  Here is my list of reasons I missed/will miss BTWD for an entire 11 year period of time:

2000: Forgot
2001: Allergies
2002: Flu-like symptoms
2003: Depressed
2004: Slept poorly
2005: Rainy weather
2006: On vacation
2007: Attending off-site conference
(2008: Feral dog scare)
(2009: Priapism)
(2010: No BTWD – hydrogen-cell vehicles have either solved the energy crisis, or blown up the freaking planet)

See you at the conference tomorrow.  I’ll be the one arriving in his hovercraft. 

Monday, May 14, 2007

here they is - mendop-hottos

Photos ahoy!  we’ve got the mendo shots, finally.  After a great, great mother’s (mothers’) day weekend, here’s some recollections from another great weekend: i’m putting the zach pix here and the artsy-fartsy ones on the photo blog.  find it through the links at the top of the page.  immediately!

This was from when we were looking out the window of the alcove in our bedroom into the forest

zach loves breakfast goddamnit

zach playing amidst the forbs of the headlands

in a bizarre reversal of two-year-old contrariness, z says “cheeeeese” for all photos, including those being taken by strangers

amongst the vineyards

and finally, on the way back home in a warm car

now, visit the photo page for the other pix!  i said immediately!  or, you know, whenever! 

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Shout Out From Incoherentopolis

Okay I know I promised some photos but nobody is going to hold me to that.  It’s nice to have one bailiwick here where I can be totally unaccountable.  Bwahahahaha, as they say.  And mom’s coming to visit as of tomorrow for the weekend, so god knows when I’ll have the time to sit down and massage my lovely exposures of Mendotown, Little River, Philo, Booneville, and the surprisingly charming Ft Bragg.  Result: no photo for you.  Yet. 

Solution, for a Thursday where I’m not getting much traction on my morning: some random cogitations!  Who doesn’t love those! 

Now that most of you have left the room, the rest of us (me and that lurker who found this site while searching for “butts and nunchucks”) can enjoy this short list of items I considered sufficiently noteworthy to annotate, though none of them really are:

* The deli where I often get my lunch (when I don’t bring it from home) now stocks both cream soda (in 20 oz bottles only) and funyuns (in “seven-serving” bags).  My response: this cannot end well. 

* From “Design Ideas” in the May ‘07 Met Home: “Stonefeel: a highly resistant mineral resin that was specially designed to retain bathwater temperature.” My response: thank god they’ve finally beaten that one.  That just leaves cold fusion, cancer, and – oh yeah, world peace.  But with properly heat-retentive bathwater receptacles (in a variety of designer colors and finishes), we are that much closer to those as well.

* World’s lamest motto, from Pasquale’s Pizzeria on Sloat down near the zoo: “You’ve tried them all.  Now try ours....” My response: it would be weak if they just limited themselves to putting themselves at the non-illustrious end of an inveterate pizza-scarfer’s “life list.” They know you’ve avoided them till now, and they don’t even imply that theirs will be distinguished from “them all” – every other pizza you’ve tried before resorting to theirs.  The words are self-deprecatory, as no motto should be.  But that ellipsis at the end, where they trail off into a shamefaced silence, their words just failing them… like that: it takes what was merely weak, and rips the spine right out of it.  They just can’t think of a single thing to tell you that would convince you to sample their rancid wares.  Makes you kind of want pizza, doesn’t it?  Right?  Right....

* Z gets a little bi-monthly rag called “Wild Baby Animals” or something like that.  It’s mainly full of wild baby animals, curiously enough - about 16 thick-stock little pages of photos and drawings and simple games.  On the back cover of the current issue, there’s a few more photos and a big letter “N” with a legend that reminds kids what “N” stands for: (pause while you think of animals with names that start with “N”, like nubuck and naugahyde and noodlefish).... NUMBAT.  Yes, N is for Numbat, according to Wild Animal Babies Magazine (soon to be a major motion picture).  My comment: N is for a lot of weird things, it seems.  But not narwhal, apparently.  Now that’s a darn shame.  Kids just aren’t getting their RDA of spiral-horned cetaceans these days.  I expected Wild Baby Animals to step up to the plate on this one.  Looks like I expected wrong.  Once again, parenting is left to the parents.  I don’t know how I feel about that.

Wow, I’m feeling a lot more productive now!  Thanks, internet!  See ya later!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Bonnie Bootie Rides Again

I’m back!  Yes, you knew I was gone, you just forgot, you insensitive cad you.  Well that’s okay, I had lots and lots of fun.  I’ll have photos soon – of the gorgeous north coast springtime and the delightful zacktasticness. Meantime, I’m so freaking busy here at my desk that it’s not really feeling much like the “off season” I was hoping for.  I know – let’s have a little story!  That’ll mellow my harsh!  Ah, but which story… one that is full of angst and stress to start with, and then lightens up and has fun, I think.  I think I know which story that is, actually.  How many licks to get to the center?  Let’s find out!

I’d had a long hard week, from which I was having difficulty psychically extricating myself.  I kept finding myself grinding my teeth or clenched in a tension-slouch or otherwise failing to live in the “now” of my not-working-weekend.  But with only a couple of days off to get away from the office, I really didn’t have time for residual grousing.  I had to do something to snap my ‘tude, and quick - or the ‘tude was eventually going to snap me.  It was that simple.

A run, was what I decided to do.  That should be quick, mostly painless, and wouldn’t involve other people – of whom I’d had about enough.  It was time to unwind outside in some inner space.  I pulled on some appropriate gear, gave my hamstrings a quick stretch, and got ready for the wide open country beyond my living room walls. 

It was a beautiful day, crisp in the shade and warm in the sun, a harmonically blue sky overhead studded with well-formed, modestly-sized clouds, late spring blooms still perfuming the gentle ocean breezes…. I cued up a vigorous mix on the ‘pod and set out down the street. 

It was rough sledding, I tell you what – I felt every step, forced every breath, had to pace myself through every turn and corner along the way.  Nothing felt natural; nothing felt easy.  Once I got into the park I tried to switch to endorphin-fueled autopilot but the groove just wasn’t there.  I pounded the pavement and it pounded me back, but I’m a stubborn old cuss and like hell was I going to give up.  I had set out to take a run, dammit, and I would take one if it killed me. 

Of course, that’s hyperbole.  Though I was uncomfortable, I was far from death.  I just forced my way along my familiar, flat, perfectly manicured course, down JFK, past the conservatory, across at Stanyan, and back again through the primordial ferns and past the rhododendron dell.  And along that very stretch, shortly before the concourse and the museum courtyards, I plodded my wheezing perspiring self down the path, focused on my music and my mechanics, expecting no harm, when I encountered, just by that bronze hedge-bound statue of a man in knickers, a barmy band of pirates!

It was about a dozen or so people, neither very old nor very young, in varying degrees of pirate garb.  Some merely wore cargo shorts and a bandana; some had tricorns, eyepatches, and fake shoulder-parrots.  One even wore an antique naval uniform, royal blue with buttons and pasmanteri and a brave little kepi; he was bound by a ludicrous rope that was held by two giggling pirates who taunted and berated and threatened him even as he professed unfaltering fealty to some ridiculous sovereign or other - and then they all started bargaining vigorously about freedom and booty, and the giving up or retention of one or both of these.  There were swashbuckling, swordplay and growls of laughter.  Everybody was hooting and cavorting and capering and basically pirating themselves up a right good time. 

I probably gaped as I ran past but they couldn’t have cared less. They were getting their pirate on and I had nothing to do with it.  Pirates, out a-pirating.  Right here in my ostensibly civilized backyard.  Buried doubloons in Golden Gate Park.  Planned spontaneity.  Hilarity.  Life.  It made my head spin.  By the time I looked up from my thoughts I was halfway past the museums, auto-trotting along with a steady gait as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  I felt strong. I felt good.  And then I realized: Those blasted gallivanting buccaneers got my groove going again.  So that was their nefarious plot.  We’d just see how far it got them.  Into my booty, or otherwise.

A few minutes later I was running out of the park and back home at the rose garden.  I reached the traffic light at Fulton and a dear friend pulled up alongside me in the dense auto traffic of Highway 1.  He hooted and waved and called out to me.  The batteries on my ‘pod had run out; there was no competing sound.  He said later that I just didn’t hear him; he could see that I was focused on my running and there was no way he was going to be able to break through.  Instead, he just drove on over to my house where he was going to babysit for us for the evening. 

Once I got home too he told me the story of how I hadn’t noticed him and we all had a good laugh at my single-mindedness.  I didn’t know at the time how to tell him that I wasn’t just spacing out: It were pirates holding me captive, matey.  Me, and my bonnie booty too. 

Thursday, May 03, 2007

The Better Part of Valor

More birdy stuff!  Next time I’ll have Peter Gabriel write the score and I’ll get Matt Modine to play the lead!  Or not!  I’m just. that. birdy!  Enjoy!

I’ve long held hawks as personal totems of a sort.  I have no particular reason for my attraction to them but I’ve always taken their occasional appearance as a good omen.  We get the red-tails, red-shouldereds, and Swainson’s around here, and it really cheers me up to see them stretched out across the sky or perched on a traffic light or treetop snag.  They always look so regal and severe.  Even that one time I saw a couple of them doing it on the top of a telephone pole, their flailing and coupling, talons clutching, hoarsely screaming, inspired in me more awe and fear than prurient amusement.  So, basically, I’ve always thought that hawks were pretty cool.  And I guess that’s as far as I took it.

I mention all this as a possible reason why I seem to have suppressed awareness of some apparently typical accipitrine behavior: being attacked by all the other birds.  It really doesn’t seem true to their form, does it?  In a one-on-one between a hawk and most any other bird, I’d put my money on the hawk.  So when I sometimes saw a hawk on the run, tail feathers being yanked by a rogue raven or crow, I’d think, damn, that is one tough raven….

I’ve seen that scene repeated many times over, and each time I’d think of it as a special case, a unique circumstance.  While these were all examples of hawks getting chased by crows, they were not taken as evidence of a general condition that crows chase hawks. 

But then I’d see a pack of seagulls kicking some proud hawk around, and it’s flapping and banking and getting trapped in a pincers move that sends it into a screaming dive, desperate for escape….  Okay, seagulls can be pretty tough too.  But still, it doesn’t really reflect very well on the hawk.

And now I realize that it’s not even that unusual to see my valiant and beautiful hawks being chased ignobly by a craven handful of guttersnipe sparrows.  I have nothing against sparrows as a species; they’re fine little birds and nice enough, I suppose; I suppose I see them as to pigeons, as squirrels are to rats…. And squirrels are fine, all things being equal.  They’re cute and they have their place in the universal Ark.  But really, who’d expect to see a squirrel chasing away, for example, a puma?  And what self-respecting hawk would let himself get asspecked by sparrows?

They’ve got some recovering and disabled hawks at the zoo; I’ve seen some of them up close.  They’ve got really dangerous talons and their beaks gleam with pure honed viciousness.  I can only think that if some hawk wanted to bring his “A” game and take out a seagull that was pissing him off, he’d be able to do it.  He’s fully equipped for the job.  But for some reason, he doesn’t.  Could it possibly be that he can’t defend himself?  What kind of a world would that be, where sparrows harass hawks with impunity, and the hawks can’t do a thing about it? 

But if he’s capable, as it seems all too obvious that he is, of clipping that sparrow’s wings, has he actually chosen to restrain himself?  Can a hawk decline to fight a belligerent sparrow? Or even a bad-ass raven?  From what I see, the answer is yes, but I’m only just realizing that I have no idea why. 

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Bird Brain

It’s been a little birdy around here lately.  I’ve had a sighting of the Stow Lake herons, and I think I saw the peregrines climbing a thermal not far from my office.  So, here’s a little more bird stuff.  I know I had a bird story not too long ago but what the hell.  It’s a whole biological family for god’s sake.  They can handle a little narrative discontinuity.

It was several months ago that Kel told me about the flocks out by where she works.  The area abuts the north bay, close enough to open water that all kinds of birds stumble by on their fluttery way to wherever birds go.  Some of Kel’s colleagues know quite a bit about the birds, much more than I do – they recognize breeds I’ve barely heard of, woodtits and flummoxed flamewaders and all sorts like that; and they also understand birdy behaviors about which I know nothing, like aggression displays and kiting and flummoxed flamewading and such.  These women are basically the repositories of all avian data, and I try to stay out of their way when it comes to such things.  There are subjects about which I consider myself expert, and those about which I consider myself merely conversant; as to talking with Kel’s friends about birds, I try to keep my mouth shut and my ears open.  These women know what they’re talking about, bird-wise, and there’s no reason for me to subject myself to superfluous embarrassment by foredoomed efforts to keep up with them. 

Except, some months ago, Kel started telling me about these crazy flocks of birds that started showing up around where she works.  As she described it, it happened every day just before dusk: hundreds and hundreds of little black birds would come together in these amazing formations, gathering from the four corners into huge masses that swerved and burbled and pulled like taffy in the air before recongealing into molten blobs, countless little black birds sucked into pulsating globular blots as if by their own gravitational opacity, separating mitotally into masses that parted and expanded and shifted and rejoined again in whole new constructions, ever evolving, ever moving….

That’s not exactly how she described it, I guess.  She didn’t really even use words; she mostly used hand-gestures and widespread arms, but I thought I got the idea.  “Little black birds, right?”

“Yeah, and they tower way up high, and then come right back into like a low flat thing, and they make this really weird sound….”

That nailed it for me.  “Oh, starlings.”

I thought this was an easy one.  However, Kel informed me that her friends had reached a different conclusion.  “K & L say they’re robins.”

“Robins?,” I asked incredulously.  “At dusk?  In flocks?  Black?  What kind of robins are they thinking of?”

Kel didn’t know.  All she knew was that her friends knew about such things, and they said they were robins.  I didn’t argue - but I harbored a lingering uncertainty. 

It was a few weeks later that the MIJ ran a story about the strangely viscous flocks above the 101 in San Rafael.  Starlings, it announced.  Vindication was mine.  It tasted better than chicken, and it looked cool too.

More bird stuff later on.  Now, a bit of fun.  (fun to be provided by blog visitor.)(that’s you.)