Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Coronets and Kings

Hey, welcome back, me!  I’ve had a dense but satisfying trip to LA, where I got to get some real quality time with my dad, my step-family (nephew scored a hat trick and two assists in his hockey game!), an old friend, and an old acquaintance who is now, whether he likes it or not, a new friend.  I ate cholesterol, salt, and sugar; I got a Tommy’s Burgers t-shirt and an electric razor, and I got to drive up and down Ventura Boulevard a few times.  Doing so, I couldn’t help but gawk at how much the place has changed.  That’s a good enough intro for this first essay in my series, Damn, The Place Sure Is Changing.  And now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging:

Palaces ain’t what they used to be back when I was a lad.  I suppose that, even then, they weren’t what they used to be, but there were still enough left to set a tone.  Growing up as I did in Cinema City, the real landmarks persevered - the Chinese, the Egyptian, the parvenue glitz of the Cinerama Dome - but even in my then-sleepy valley banlieu we still had the Studio and the Sherman and the La Reina, big classy movie houses lining the south side of Ventura Boulevard where everybody in line was waiting for the same show and elaborate terrazzo mosaics reflected gorgeous neon fantasies flickering above bijoux box offices.  One big screen for one big movie.  It felt special when you entered those storied portals, like you were visiting a realm that was part throwback and part fantasy.  They were called “palaces” for a reason.  Architecturally, decoratively, and in sheer bulk, they ruled.

But even as I was growing up, the palaces were being supplanted by bourgeois new multiplexes.  Utilitarian, uninspired, more like waiting rooms at second-rate airports than worlds unto themselves, these outlet malls of the entertainment world efficiently slurped up the filmic crowds like a shop-vac clears stale popcorn from sticky theater floors.  I always preferred the big fancy theaters but if a multiplex was showing what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it, I’d happily go there instead.  So maybe I was part of the problem.  I’d like to think it would be more accurate to say that I was just a little more grist for the evolving grindhouse mill. 

The Sherman and Studio and La Reina all closed between my entering high school and my leaving college.  I’d go out to Hollywood sometimes to see a big budget blockbuster on a football field screen, but frankly it was inconvenient.  Those rare times I went to see a movie, I usually hit the ‘plex and I didn’t think twice about it. 

Once I moved to San Francisco I figured I’d left the palaces behind, but I was sort of mistaken: the city still had a few big screens where cinema was king.  One by one, these too closed up.  The Moorish extravagances of the Alhambra were shuttered, eventually to become a fitness club.  The pharonic fantasy of the Alexandria, already cut down to three screens, locked its curved portico and continues slowly to decompose even unto the present day.  Meanwhile, multiplexes proliferated, even seeking some share of the elegance and cachet that once distinguished real movie palaces but achieving only a pre-fab Logan’s Run tawdriness.  Even though the Metreon ‘plex boasts a massive IMAX screen, and the AMC 1000, cushy stadium seats, there was only one real first-run palace left in town - and it was just a few blocks from my home.

The Coronet wasn’t a beautiful palace, all brutal boxy angles and dumbed-down details, but lord love it, it was big.  It filled half a block and held a natural crowd, and its screen was cinemax grand.  It’s where Star Warses opened - all of them, with costumed hordes camping on the sidewalk for a week to ensure a premiere seat.  It was a place where imagination still superseded reality.  As a palace it left a lot to be desired, but it was still there, damn it, and it was a real destination. 

The Coronet was where we’d go with friends to see the big new shows, Potters and Hobbits and such, where magnificent images flickered and loomed like 2-D gods above us.  We’d always sit all the way down in front.  Usually those aren’t the best seats, but the Coronet had old-school proportions: the front row was a good 40 yards from the screen and when we sat there we could stretch out our legs, slump comfortably on well-worn velour thrones, unpack a knapsack of tasty snacks and adult beverages, and have a fine old time.  Fruit and cheese, bourbon and wine, all the tastiest sweetmeats accompanied us to Hogwarts, Mordor and Tattooine.  The Coronet had its shortcomings but you never noticed them from the front row.  I felt ownership.  It felt right.

Two years ago the Coronet closed, another victim of market forces and cut-rate entertainment.  Its one big screen just couldn’t bring in sufficiently consistent dollars to stay lit.  Since then it’s stood shuttered, plywood sheets blocking the broad entry and tired old flags left to tatter and fade above the marquee in the cold foggy wind that whips along Geary.  A sign has announced for 24 or more months that it’s the future site of a center on aging.  Meanwhile, it’s atrophied and withered before my eyes, falling further into desuetude week by week.  My bus takes me past it at least once a day, and every day I sensed the leaching of cinemagic from its stucco.  Where we once lined up to escape into greatness, we now actively ignored while traffic rolled past.  What was once a palace had become an empty shell.

How empty, I didn’t realize till recently.  Now as my bus speeds past the erstwhile grandeur of what was once the Coronet, I see the front of the building, the east wall, the back – and the gaping, vacant interior, yawning with a vacuum that cannot be filled.  The west wall has been entirely removed.  Construction crews now crawl over the roofless, exposed hulk, ripping the sinews from a vast space where I once spent hours escaping my world - a world the Coronet itself could not escape.  That vale of freedom where we once lounged and caroused in fabulous darkness is now exposed to the glare of the sun, the rubble of demolition, the unmitigated harshness of progressive reality.  I can see where those front row seats once were, but are no more.  The magic and majesty are drained entirely away.  I miss the Coronet and all that it brought to my life, even if most of it was illusory.  I’m sure it’ll be a fine senior center, but I could really use a palace sometimes. 

Thursday, July 26, 2007

You Think You Can Dance, Nu?

Hey, thanks for visiting.  I know you’ve got some important television to watch; hell, we all do.  It’s summertime, which used to mean The Don Knotts Variety Hour, but now it’s time for more reality on the small screen than I can fit into my whole pathetic life.  Which reminds me: I’m leaving town for three days or so tomorrow, to visit those who mean most to me in LA; I’ll be back early next week.  But also, and additionally: furthermore!  I just watched another 2.5 tivo hours (about 1 hour of regular human time) of a show I never wanted to watch, and now I am prohibited ever from missing - “So You Think You Can Dance.” It’s dorky and nerdish, and feeds on my old theater camp proclivities (I was the one whose dance solos invariably evoked howls of sympathetic but unfettered laughter).  So I know I can’t dance.  However, I can make fun of those who do, and even more skillfully, I can make fun of the title of the show on which they do so.  And since I’ll be brunching on sunday with one who not only can dance, but was actually voted as the sexiest guy on broadway a few years ago (would that I were joking), as the final installment in my listy goodness series, I choose to hone my facetiousness to the maximum with the following -

ALTERNATE TITLES FOR THE TELEVISION PROGRAM, “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE”!

Don’t Even Call that Dancing.  Just, Don’t.
What’s With the Dancing, and You Thinking You Can Do It?
Dancing May Not Be Your Strong Suit - Or Is It?
Oh How Wonderful You Must Be, Mr Fancy Dancy Pants
So Make With The Dancing Already
Dancing?  You?  For Reals?
It’s Not That I Don’t Think You Can Dance But, Come On, I Mean, Just Look At You, for God’s Sake.

Well that should be enough of that.  I’ll be back soon enough with a series of essays on endings.  Oh don’t get maudlin.  It’s too early.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Quintriviad: Five Years Blogging and This Is All I Have to Show For It

What, are you still here?  For god’s sake, man, it’s been a full five years!  That’s half a decade, or 1.25 olympiads, or - here’s a weird one - nearly 1/9th of my whole freaking life!  What’s been five years, you ask, mumbling as you check to see if you’re trailing toilet paper or have an embarassing stain on your undercarriage?  Five long blogging years, it’s been, my friends.  Or you could just call them “blonging” years - but even I wouldn’t understand you.  As if that’s ever stopped any of us before. 

But this blog began on July 24, 2002, and for better or - typically - worse, it’s still here today.  Thanks for sticking with me, those of you who did.  As for the rest of you, you’ve broken my heart.  And I love ya for it. 

Speaking of not having been stopped, and before, and blonging and breaking and loving, I wish now to celebrate this auspicious date as I have traditionally done in years past - by the humiliating abnegation of referencing my 40 favorite posts from the year prior to the year just past.  That’s right, I’m insufficiently objective to pick out faves from ‘06 to ‘07, but at least I’m able to do it from ‘05 to ‘06.  And here they are, chosen without method or even madness, and listed chronologically so nobody’s feelings get hurt.  Hope you enjoy them (again).  It’s strange how much work it takes to come up with these lists when I barely have to write anything for them!

Belief
By Next Week Maybe I’ll Find My Tongue
Beaten Up From the Inside
The Gauntlet
Ground Floor
S.Y.S. - A Poem That Forced The Issue
Wide Smiles
NZB and Me
Closeted Doors
looking back: last weekend, before it’s too late; PLUS SWEET AND HOT CARROTS AND ZUKES
Life Doesn’t Just Give You Lemons
Flooded with Memories - Plus a Genuine Ghost
The Mail Man
The Picnic
The Hillel You Say
Homeward Bound: The Hard Way
The Dog Who Flew
Meatwalker
The Long View
Sweeping Up After Earth Day
The Night Uncle Gene Saved Christmas
Knowledge is Flower
Snatching Victory
A Little Joke, and then a much longer and less funny one
K.I.S.S. - Simplistic Syrup
The Miraculous Regenerating Monkeybutt
Close Focus and Fine Tuning
From Beeing to Uncertainty
LAudamus
Fritz
Salad Days and Bonzo Nights: Revenge of the Recipe Corner
Another Unbeatable Weekend
Eat Dessert First: Pieman Comes to Brunch
Spidey and the Good Pot
Staying at Home
Conversatin’
Random Weirdness - In Here and Out There
Onioning
Standing Sentry
King of the Mountain

... so there you have it, a full year of my life, selectively reiterated.  Doesn’t seem so much, now that I look back on it.  Or, put another way, it seems like entirely too much altogether.  I guess that’s the magic of the internet.  That, and meeting you-all.  Now skedaddle your shavetails on home, try to stay out of trouble, and I’ll catch you up again here next year!

Zoo List, plus deeliebop Zach - Highlights of a Decent Weekend

Monday!  Realm of unutterable delight!  Era of good feelings!  Hangnail of the working week!  And welcome to it!  Since today is the 23rd, I’m not quite ready for my full recap, so let me give you a mini-cap, or yarmulke, of a post. 

Yesterday our plans were suddenly and precipitously changed by the illness of a dear friend, whom we intended to visit with her brother and parents, but who woke up hurling and feverish.  Disinclined to partake in such party games, we wound up going to the zoo instead and having a SUPER DELIGHTFUL time with Jon, Lisa, Sophie and Aaron.  (Aaron’s the pisher whose bris I helped facilitate.  And is it just me or is this post sort of heavy on the jewtalk already?  And why shouldn’t it be?  Hamish mishagas, gevalt!) Anyway, we got to the SF Zoo at pre-noon and left post-four, for a nice long sojourn amidst the wildcrapping beasts and beastlets.  Of particular note:

* The new bear exhibit totally rocks.  One of the grizzlies kept wandering over to the window to check us checking her out.  It’s not like I spend a lot of time 3 feet from a grizzly but it seemed like I could.  Z was particularly entranced by how the area allowed him to run in a large circle.  Which he did, much to the amusement of himself, pretty much alone. 

* Pink popcorn!  For some reason I thought I really wanted my very own brick of this questionable product; I’d actually held this desire close to my secret heart for several months now so when the opportunity presented itself I got some, and simultaneously Kel got me some too.  So I had two bricks of this… um.... confection.  The best part about it is how the kids on the package are riding a giant ear of corn like experimental teenagers with a vibrating massage chair.  Which is to say, buy it for the packaging, but don’t bother much with the contents.  Even the kids seemed more interested in smashing it flat on the pavement with their tiny pods.  Never has pink tasted so bland, and I’ve had some damn bland pink.  I think that came out wrong but you know what I mean.  Right?

* Speaking of which: PANTHERA LEO BOINK!  We strolled over to the large outdoor lion habitat and I pointed out to six-year-old Sophie where the male and female lions (one of each) were reclining in the shady cool of the afternoon.  She asked many wise questions, including why they didn’t have any baby lions.  I tried to make light of the question, to evade the obvious path it was taking, and then, considerately, the male lion got up and began to perform the dance of making baby lions with the female, hunching his majestic and fearsome self in a sort of comical way over and against her hindquarters.  It was natural and true and pretty damn amusing to watch.  Sophie wanted to know why everybody was laughing.  We told her that they were hugging but she’s smart enough to know that we only told her half the story. 

* I got my lunch at a little stand that sells Asian rice bowls, and grabbed some disposable chopstix wherewith to consume my repast.  The stix came in a red paper sleeve that reads: “Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.  Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and cultural.” While this seems self-explanatory, I think they went too far with the following explanation, on the obverse, of how to use the enclosed morsel-pickers: “Learn how to use your chopsticks // Tuk under tnurnb and held firmly // Add second chopstick hold it as you hold a pencil // Hold tirst chopstick in original position move the second one up and down Now you can pick up anything:” Let me tell you, this is, like so many things, a baldfaced lie.  I tried picking up a mandrill, a strong wi-fi signal, and a cocktail waitress, and all I have to show for it is my used and empty wrapper.  Story of my freaking life. 

Regardless, overall, an excellent day at the zoo.  The weekend also included us getting Z a little CD player for his room, in a futile attempt to persuade him to stop climbing out of his crib at night.  I watched Ghost Rider and Hell’s Kitchen, and had an excellent jog in the park pushing the boy in the sport-stroller.  Things were good.  However, it’s hard to top the following photo, taken by my cousin’s cell phone when we visited her for movies a few weekends ago and Z got tired watching Matthew Broderick bugging out his eyes:
bopping with the global thermonuclear war

I think that’s all for now.  Until next time, everything is super-great and normal - catch you tomorrow with the big list!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Coming Soon to a Campus Near YOU!

Hey Ho, Blogsylvania!  I want to get a quick post posted but most of what I’ve got ready for ya is either too wordacious or doesn’t really seem to fit the flow I’ve got going right now.  The flow, such as it is, is listy goodness, and more’s to come so I don’t want to flummox the slurry or whatever it is one does when one messes up the regular course of things.  The last post was a list.  The next post will be a list.  This post seems destined for listaciousness.  And lucky for us all, I happen to have one ready right here. 

See, Kel is out right now at a friend’s pre-wedding party.  I won’t denigrate it with the appellation “bachelorette” because they’re going to do actually fun cool stuff, starting with drinks at one of my favorite brewpubs and finishing up going to a great venue to see one band I’ve loved for years and one I’ve wanted to see for years.  The “known quantity” is SCI, and I’m officially envious of Kel’s going as I would never have been had she gone to tawdry strip joints where I might have accidentally run into her anyway.  The band I’ve wanted to see live and which she’s probably watching EVEN AS I TYPE THIS is the Disco Biscuits.  Not only have they got a burgeoning national rep; NOT ONLY has my wise and monkeyfunny cousin-in-law been lauding them for years; but just this month my college alumni magazine has a big article about how cool they are (since three of them went to ol’ Alma Mater U and did a big show out there this year already). 

The venue where this show is going down is the Berkeley Greek*, on the Cal campus.  It’s so cool to go to school somewhere that really good music comes right to you.  I can say this from experience, because I’ve been making a list of the really good music that I saw while on campus (or no less than two blocks off campus) during my sojourn in undergrad city.  In no particular order, I offer the following list of ARTISTS I REMEMBER REALLY KICKING ASS ON CAMPUS WHILE I WAS IN COLLEGE:

Stevie Ray Vaughn
Psychedelic Furs
Kool and the Gang (same show as syke furs, and also southside johnny which was a really weird lineup)
Laurie Anderson (both live performance and a major fine arts installation)
Robert Mapplethorpe (major photo installation)
The Gospel at Colonus (technically a stage production but featuring Clarance Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, all playing Oedipus, with Morgan Freeman as the narrator)
NRBQ
Bill Bruford and Pat Moraz
Marshall Crenshaw
The Grateful Dead
REM
Gyuto Tantric Monks
The Curtis Organ at Irvine Auditorium

Good times, people.  Have a nice whatever.  I’ll be back atcha with a delayed annual recap real soon.

(* photo courtesy of http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/berkeleys_greek.php)

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Smile When You Call Me That

it’s late and I have much to do, but heaven forfend I abjure the blog (from the broadway spectacular of the same name).  Just to keep you in excess verbiage for the interregnum, here’s a short list from my little memopad:

PEOPLE WHO ARE LIKELY TO KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES IN A FIGHT:

Guy Kwan Do
Jim Jitsu
Anais Nïn Jitsu
Karl Raté
Marshall Ortz

Now you go on and have yourself a nice weekend.  No, really. 

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

I Can’t Place the Name but the Blackface is Familiar….

In my craven effort to revive my moribund posting practices, here’s a bit of trivia you may find amusing, or depressing, or amupressing perhaps is the word I wish existed to describe how you may feel about this:

DARKIE!  For years, merely a crude racial epithet - but it’s also a delicious and nutritious asian toothpaste!  but you didn’t need to go to the mysterious orient to get it - it was being sold here on the very streets of this our America, where I’ve seen it several times at the big asian markets in my ‘hood.  It was offensive and demeaning, but also sort of pathetic.  “Darkie” toothpaste?  Really?  You think that’s gonna get me to use your prophalyxis cream?  I think not.*

Well now it seems a New World Order has stepped in.  The brand was bought by Palmolive or somebody and, despite deep penetration into the asian milieu (sounds hottter than it is), they changed the name.  In english, anyway.  Now it’s Darlie!  and the black dude on the label - he’s ambigufied!  No problems here, officer!

However, it seems the original art still lives - in Japan - with an even more offensive name!  I can’t even begin to describe what “mouth jazz” evokes for me.  This is a family blog.  I’m just saying - I’m sticking with Crest.  I don’t know why that’s a good name for toothpaste but at least I don’t want to slap the tube every time I see it.  And for a tubeslapper like me, that’s saying something. 

(* and disappeared.  the punchline to an existential joke about - whom?)

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Cutting Corners

The walk in from the bus - I’ve got that pretty much down.  I know the most efficient route, the most efficient speed, and all the shortcuts.  I’m a regular whiz when it comes to getting from the drop-off at Bush and Sansome down to the Rincon District where I work.  From cutting the corner at the third column in front of the Mission-Main Starbucks to minimize deflected energy, to spotting the time bandits and securing a path around them and their tiresome intrusions, I know every trick in the book.  Granted, it’s a short and rather under-developed book, but I know every trick in it regardless and I’ll be damned if I let you make me feel bad about it.  I seem to have gotten a little defensive there.  Sorry.

Anyhoo, my inherent affinity for efficiency is always gratified by a brisk lean walk in from the bus stop in the morning, and nowhere so much as where Pine and Davis meet at Market out across from the PGE building.  PGE’s got a great old business piazza out near the foot of Market at an intersection where one street grid butts up against a second grid, offset below it on a diagonal.  I come in from the west on the north side of Market, and I need to cross east and then south to continue into SOMA.  In a sense, it’s very complex: four lanes southbound cutting at an angle across six northeast-southwest lanes with lots of streetcars and busses and delivery trucks - but that stuff usually works itself out and rarely makes a significant impact if you’ve got your eyes open. 

Then again, you could say it’s easy - just wait at the light, cross, and then cross again - but of course that’s the sucker’s way, ludicrously inefficient when the angles are all calculated.  The crosswalk route across Market follows the wide angle of these non-perpendicular streets, so it’s about three times longer a walk than I need to take, dropping me at the far corner when a direct route would have brought me halfway to my next turn south at the other end of the block. 

If you watch the traffic, the bias is a much cleaner route, and you know I’m all about the being next to the godliness.  With good timing and traffic karma, the cross at the broad conjoined feet of Pine and Davis and then over Market and down to Main is a work of deft balletic artistry.  Done right, it’s a sweet little rush to start my day. 

Thus it was that I was pointedly conscious of my trajectory as I stepped off the eastbound curb at Market and Pine two Tuesdays ago.  The air was cool and the sun was warm on my face and I could see my whole route about to open before me in an essentially straight line across three non-parallel streets.  The music in my ‘buds responded on cue with a fresh anthem to power and grace, and my pace solidified from an easy jaunt to “total value striding.” I moved confidently toward a spot that an oncoming cab was just clearing as I reached it, across to the declining aspect of the opposite curb on the other side of Davis, briefly topping one stride on the furthest reach of that oblique slab and then off again across Market, cutting widely across the painted crosswalk and across the open street, heading toward the inside corner of a little florist’s stand halfway down the block.  Every step was maximally efficient; I felt as if the whole streetscape was just an extension of my own strong-walking self. 

It wasn’t, of course, as I discovered as I came up on the sidewalk on the far side and edged into pedestrian traffic again.  I wove gently between street-trees and newsracks on a maximally efficient route that skirted both the florist and a big subway stairwell.  I was on the enlightened path, ready to brush past that florist’s with minimum clearance.

Then it occurred to me that there may not have been a very good reason to be quite that efficient.  Especially when the efficient path would lead to my possibly kicking over some sort of goddamn floral display right there on the sidewalk, directly in harm’s (and my) way.  For indeed, just ahead of my pounding pedal extremities, I finally discerned:

A white plastic bucket, there at my feet as I finally glanced down at this key node on my nonsense-free power ambulation to work.  I was charging full steam towards my beige fifth-floor cube, where I’d be arriving 20 minutes early to spend the next 8 to 10 hours bereft of fresh air, and as I pared the corner of the little florist stand as close as I possibly could I saw a white bucket at my feet, the early morning sun coursing full against one side of it, filling the interior with a rich, ethereal light.  And in the bucket were roses, white roses in barely unfurled buds, generous bunches bundled together and glowing in the reverberant light inside a bucket that just happened to catch that glorious light just like that at the very moment I came motoring along. 

Those roses, man.  It was like I could hear them singing, they looked so good in the buttery shadowless light inside that bucket that I’d likely have knocked right over had I cut my corner another three inches tighter.  But instead I looked down and saw roses, and paused, and took my time with the next block and a half of my walk before I went indoors for the rest of the day, and I kept on thinking of those roses all day long even after I was at my little work station, stationary and workful.  I think it was a better day, overall, because of it.

Moral: You don’t always have to stop and smell them, but watch out for those goddamn roses.  A little dab’ll do ya if you keep your eyes open. 

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Why “Good” has two o’s in it

You know, I hope, that I’m all about the efficiency.  I hate to waste time, effort, or words - or even letters.  If there’s a superfluous or echolaliac syllable in something I want to say, I will bend heaven and earth to contract, reduce, and blend the words to make them flow more smoothly. 

However, this exercise does have its limits and I think I bumped up into one of them yesterday.

I was making my morning oatmeal and cutting thereinto some diced mango.  Mmm, luscious mango, diced fresh at the table, just like your mammy usta do.  Anyway, I like my goddamn mangos so I cut’em up and dumped them in my oatmeal and I don’t want anybody giving me a hard time about it.  Except that I started trying to describe this delicacy and realized that the repeated “o” sounds in “mango” and “oatmeal” seemed clumsy and redundant.  My love for linguistic efficiency compelled me to try to combine the words so that sound would only have to be articulated once. 

What I wound up with was “mangoatmeal.” Sounds chupacabralicious, no?  No?  No.  Man-Goat Meal sounds like one of Dr Moreau’s pre-packaged “hybrid chow” products, whereas “Mango Oatmeal” sounds like a delightful tropical breakfast treat.  My lesson learned: Sometimes you don’t want to be too efficient.  An elision or ellipsis can spell much more than I’d intended, and an extra letter in the right place can save paragraphs of explanation.

Q.E.D. 

RiverTrippin’, plus Fruitylicious Dancakes

I made it a point neither to read nor write while I was away, with the exception of recipes.  I just let things unfold and cherished them till they blew away in an upriver breeze.

We left Monday evening so I resigned myself to arriving after dark - and, more significantly, to finding my way along unfamiliar and likely unlit highways to a little street just before a little town I’d never visited.  It sounded tricky, but as it turned out the turn was hard to miss and we arrived in the shank of a placid summer night.  Z and E immediately took off playing with each other, alternately hugging and sharing toys, and snatching them away and pushing each other down, and then taking a few laps around the coffee table or a few belly-slides down the steep carpeted stairs.... We were lavished with succulent racks of porkrib and bowls of crispy gingersnaps; we shmoozed and got the lay of the land and began to settle into a vacation rhythm.  When we went to our big comfortable room with two big comfortable beds, Z and I fell asleep together fast and hard and we slept right through till pancake time the next day.

Breakfast: fruitylicious dancakes.  And Yes, I’m going to tell you how to make them.  If you’ve stuck around this long you’ve earned it.  Let’s not tarry, now, you’ve got flapjacks to jackflap.  Here’s how I made them Tuesday morning: Mix, in a generous bowl, as follows: 2-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, whisked together with 2 Tablespoons of baking powder, 4 Tablespoons of sugar, and about a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon of coriander (for the bouquet, dontcha know).  (Oh yes, you’ll need a whisk.  A good one, for god’s sake.  Not like that trashy one you took to the prom.) Then mix in a cup or two of frozen blueberries (which cook up much better than fresh; make sure they’re not frozen together).  These are your dry ingredients.  Respect them.  Cherish them.  Set them aside for a few minutes. 

In a separate bowl whisk two eggs (egg beaters work too but make tougher cakes) with two Tablespoons of cooking oil (not olive oil) (what, are you crazy? Are you a crazy person, to even think of olive oil in the pancakes?  Meshugener, that’s you.  Well gesheuntheit.) Mix the egg and oil vigorously enough to blend it thoroughly.  Don’t wimp out on the egg beating, man. Beat it like you mean it.  Then whisk in two cups of liquid - mostly, if not entirely, milk (or something like it).  Finally, mash an overripe banana into goo, stir it into the wet ingredients, and then dump the wet ingredients into the dry ones and whisk it all into a fairly consistent slurry.  Make sure all the dry ingredients get incorporated.  Let the mix sit for five minutes while you get an oiled griddle medium hot.  (I like spray oil for this application - the traditional version crisps up the sides a little more than I like.)

Pour out about a ladlesworth of batter at a time - make the cakes no more than 10” across (1.3 hectares) or you won’t be able to flip’em.  When they show active bubbling across their whole surface, use a thin spatula to separate them from the pan and then flip them over.  This is actually a little tricky and practice helps. Sorry, no tips.  Yer kakes are done when they look done, and will stand up to any goddamn syrup you want to pour.  This should make about a dozen good-sized cakes.  Bring it on, hotcake boy.

The rest of Tuesday we spent at the riverbank, wading across the gentle invigorations of the whole damn Russian River, our two families rafting and tubing and playing at baseball and on beached canoes, an authentic frolic in the woodlands and it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.  After we got home I napped, showered, and put together some marinated pan-friend Brussels sprouts that worked well with the fire-grilled New York strip and bonus pork ribs that took center stage on every plate.  Dessert was pineapple bread pudding with English custard sauce and after that there wasn’t much left of the evening for any of us. 

Wednesday broke overcast and stayed that way long enough for us to drive out to the coast and the debouchment of the river into the pacific.  We walked a long and lonely beach that was decorated tastefully with a discreet arrangement of tendrilous seaweeds, beached protoplasmic jellyfish, and delightful beds of parti-colored pebbles.  Z sidled up to me, reached up to take my hand, and gently invited me - “come, daddy” - to wade with him in the broad lip of waves as they expended themselves on the strand.  He giggled and squealed as he chased the foamy wavering vergepoint between land and sea, and he delighted in stomping his thick little feet into the wet sand till they were half-buried and a wave would catch him stuck there.  The only tears were when we told him it was time for us to leave. 

But leave we did - we left Blind Beach, and then, a healthy pizza-and-grilled-cheese-sandwich lunch later, we left our friends, left Guerneville altogether, drove the hell home and now I’m writing again.  It was a time that was to time what caramel is to candy - dense, chewy, easy to dig your teeth into and hard to leave once you’ve started, and, of course, sweet enough to give you shivers.  But the thing about caramels is, once you’ve had a little one, you want the rest of the goddamn bag.  I’m not complaining, believe me - it was a fantastic break and I appreciate it with every fiber of my being.  I could just use, you know, a little more.  And really, who couldn’t?

Thanks, Mitch and Cath and Eli, for an excellent river adventure.  And for the rest of you, get the hell out and hit the water!  The way it seems to me is, if you can make out there on a sunny Tuesday, it’ll even feel more satisfying! 

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Free for the Taking: Guerilla Decor!

I mentioned here a few weeks ago that I’d gotten some cool panels for free from a tansu store that was going out of business or closing a warehouse or something.  Here’s they is:

First, both sides of the painted panel with the stylin’ gold-ness:

because cranes are lucky.  oh yes they are you misinformed addlepate.  lucky, and beauteeful.  so stop making trouble.  Speaking of which - on the other side:

(and don’t miss the delightful pull-tab hardware!  - as if you need reminding...)

then, panel number two, with the cool old hinges and the keyhole that sort of looks like it’s winking at you…

and finally, to round out the quadriviad, or whatever it’s called when there’s four of them, here’s the panel I just up and found on the sidewalk, as if someone had actually thrown it away!  because people - they are crazy!  crazy with hating art, to have disposed so ignominiously of such a masterpiece!  it’s just a little thing, barely the size of a popular hardbound novel (you know the one I mean), but man oh man does it pack in the mystery and weirdness!  I’m not sure where to hang it yet, but mark my words I am going to have it up sooner than later.  Mark them well.  Use one of those china markers with the little string you pull to expose the wax.  When else are you going to get a chance?  And with that I give you: Landscape with druidic altar by mr “jones”. 

I don’t know about you but it just gets me in a sacrificin’ mood, seeing that big ol’ rock there in the wilderness.  Then again, I’ve been hankering for a sacrifice for some time now.  I guess the picture just sort of put it all together for me.  Nice, when art can do that for you, eh?

Tomorrow night we head up to the river for a few midweek days of relaxation in the blazing sun’s mercilessly blazing blazes.  Or maybe we’ll go indoors sometimes too.  anyway, I’ll be back at work on Thursday.  I like the way the week is working out, so far.  Don’t forget, while I’m away - this blog’s intended use is entertainment, not flotation.  Never use this blog in open waters or without responsible adult supervision.  This blog’s patch kit is more trouble than it’s really worth. 

Thursday, July 05, 2007

From Yesterday, Generally: Y is the Fourth of July

From Last Night:

So hello again, and it’s good to be back.  (pause for uninterrupted loner cricket-chirping.) So anyway, the rest was much appreciated and we’re all nicely fed and waiting for it to be time to go to see fireworks, which I think Z only barely comprehends.  This should be fun, and in the meantime, I can share a little overdue chucklelove.  It’s been a good few weeks.

Actually, I’ve got a nice slew of essay ideas in my memo pad, and two essays written - but they both seem a little negative for the follow-up to that miserable bit I posted a few days ago to be a troublemaker… I’m looking now for something that’s more in line with classic hut-wise observational flimflam.  Yes, there’s a name for it, observational flimflam, and I guess I should have told you earlier but whatever.  I considered a rant about the intersection, or lack thereof, between founding national principles (and principals), and the Scooter Libby thing, but that’s likely to be heavyhanded and of passing relevance.  Instead I think I’ll just freehand a few lines about our walk in the park today and get back into the groove again with some sunny notions.  For an internet that has given me so much and really asked so little of me, it seems the very least that I could do.

One of the best things about the Fourth of July is that it is so tied to a date, rather than to a day.  Christmas is always Thursday, and so is Thanksgiving; but the Fourth of July is whatever day of the week that the fourth happens to fall on that year, so sometimes it’s a three-day weekend and sometimes, like today, it’s a Wednesday off.  Long weekends bring out tourists but on Wednesdays off everybody’s local.  On our walk through Golden Gate Park we saw lots of different kinds of locals co-habitating on the picnic grounds.  The park seemed full of promise and opportunity and enormous coolers bursting with sausage and burgers and a wide range of beverages.  The sun was warm; the ocean breeze was fresh and cooling; the overall scene was idyllic. 

The up-close scene revealed lots of color:

(at this point I had to leave - Z was reminding me it was time to see the fireworks.  It was so much fun to bundle him up and take him out to the end of the jetty.  He was tired but an absolute trouper so he was still ready to party at 9:15 when the first boat in the bay set off a few modest rockets.  They exploded into spheres of green or blue sparkles, or with short iridescent plumes of flame, and then faded quickly away.  We couldn’t hear them go off but we could see them a short distance away over the water.  Z became agitated.  He turned away from the display.  We tried to calm him down but then Sausalito started their display at 9:20 and that further incensed him mightily.  By the time SF started their dual display (off the pier and a barge in tandem), Z was sobbing and we were walking back to the car.  We tried to slow down and steal peeks but he was having none of it, demanding tearfully anytime he caught us that we pick up the pace.  It looks like it was probably a great display.  Maybe we’ll see more of it next year.  I think we will.  Z woke up this morning very refreshed and cheerful saying both that he liked and did not like fireworks.  That’s probably a good sign.  And now I’m back from a short work day and a bit of jury duty (I am excused, tyvm, like I will ever serve on a goddamn jury, justice FEARS me, pussy justice) and I can finish whatever this is.  Observational flan?  Flip-flops?  I retract the above but continue as follows: )

At one of the first picnic areas, a number of loud, enthusiastic high-school age kids was getting ready to welcome a big group, shouting and playing loud music and goofing on each other with energy and enthusiasm and shrieking.  They were dressed nicely, all well-groomed, but they were loud as all hell.  Next to them a tired-looking quartet, a dude and three women in their 20s, looked with hung-over disdain from their adjacent reserved picnic area, holding down the fort till someone arrived with the food.  They had no food, nothing but some speakers for an ipod, on which they played some kind of emo pop, sort of quietly.  They sat on their table and listened to their quiet music and glared at their neighbors, silently silencing them in their minds with extreme prejudice.  The loud kids were oblivious, which made it all the more amusing. 

A Korean family had set up for a family grilling party.  Next to their table they had laid out light but sturdy folding chairs, in a row of decreasing height.  The chairs looked comfortable but no one was at the chairs.  They stood by the table.  Their table was covered with a tablecloth, on which several food storage containers had been laid out.  The family stood in order of decreasing status and height, beginning naturally with the father (who stood with fierce pride in his jaw and a relaxed polo pullover paired with cuffed linen shorts for this important celebratory undertaking).  Next to him, his son, taller but slouching despite himself; then, his wife, and then two daughters, the first taller than the wife and the second shorter.  They were ranked up in front of the table, with the father standing next to his gleaming stainless steel portable grill, which shone brilliantly in the daylight.  The park’s own cooking grill, a key focus of activity at so many other picnic sites, moldered in disregard, rusted and damp and looking utterly spent.  The new grill was closed tight; a thin plume of smoke escaped from it.  The dad watched the smoke and the rest watched dad. 

At the far end of the meadow stood the final picnic area.  Two hipster types were stuffing drinks into icy coolers, or something like that… my first thought was, how nice, hipster picnic, cynicism can’t stop them from enjoying a Wednesday off, and I immediately chastised myself for the assumptions larding every part of that statement.  We kept walking down the path and just a few feet down was their table, one of those classic park bench type tables with a big generous wooden top and wooden benches secured on either side beneath it.  At this table stood a muscular young man with wavy hair and a tribal bracelet tattoo around his bicep and a staple gun, securing white butcherpaper over the table.  He sort of glowed in the warming sunlight, chest thrown wide and jaw set with determination, popping his staple gun, repeatedly, thick arms flexing with desperate seriousness, dozens of staples, staples every inches or two it must have been, and still he kept going as we walked past, that staple gun popping with apathetic regularity, and all I could think was, damn that table is going to stay covered today.

And that is why is the fourth of july.  Happy yesterday, free world!  Happy today, too!

Monday, July 02, 2007

Whose Dog?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  the pressure seems to be off and I’m writing more stuff, but I just don’t have the patience for that right now so I’ll just pawn you off on one of my end-of-the-millennium essays.  This one was 11/14/99, and it’s kind of angsty.  I called it “Whose Puppy?” Might as well stick with that now, too.

She’s in a black designer sweat suit, eyeshadow sparkling gold and green, with a little rott puppy she’s brought for free shots at the clinic in the park. But this one’s skin shows through his downy fur; his eyes are sunken and resigned.  He is waiting, exhausted, for something to happen. The puppy is unwell.

She’s angular, twisting, pointed hips jutting and elbows tight.  I tell her: the vet will need to see this one; the dog is young and very sick.  She feared as much.  The vet looks at the pup and diagnoses ringworm: it can be treated over time, with medicine and effort.  (Thanks for coming.)

The woman does not want to hear this.  She is standing with her puppy, wanting something else to happen, something that will make the puppy just get better.  We ignore her as she stands there.  Other people mill and bustle. She is hovering, frustrated, and her puppy shivers weakly. Once again I thank her for caring so much for her dog, but she demurs. 

Forty minutes later: she is standing by the fence, leaning into wire diamonds.  In a soggy cardboard box a dozen feet away, the puppy sits. His gaze on her is blank, impassive.  Hers is wracked. One hand paws the wire fence; the other she has wrapped around herself.  She drops her gaze and draws a breath, lifts up her head with resolution.  She is looking at the puppy like she’s never seen him till this moment. He is looking back at her like he has seen it all before.