Tuesday, October 30, 2007

punkakes

All right you sneaky wieners, I know you’re skulking around the dusty cinderblock remnants of the ruined edifice of the Chucklehut Recipe Corner, wondering when I’m going to make your life worth living again, kitchen-action-wise.  Well it’s RIGHT NOW, my friends, so gather ‘round my blazing can of sterno, pull up a roll of discarded carpet, and get comfortable - I’m about to tell you about the newest thing to change my life.

It’s pancakes. 

Oh yes, I make pancakes all the time, at least once a week, from scratch and with love and creativity.  But those were just regular old breakfast pancakes.  They had nothing to do with using up the remaining pumpkin puree left over from Kel’s fabulous Joy of Cooking pumpkin cookies, which I’m so glad she made this past weekend.  But she only made a single batch, so we had half a can of sienna goo left over.  What to do? 

PUMPKIN PANCAKES.  That’s right, baby.  These ones are different.  How can I tell?  I made them on Sunday, and when the 30-month-old boy woke up on Monday and then on Tuesday, both days he asked for pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.  Luckily we had a few set aside - they’re heavier than my usual version so I couldn’t eat my full share - so we were able to set the boy up as requested.  And damn but they were still as good as that first morning, light and spicy and punkinlicious.  And you know you like the punkinliciousness.  Yes you do.  Don’t be saying no when I know your heart says yes. 

SO:  here’s what I did - I looked up about five pumpkin pancakes recipes on line, came up with a common thread, and then improved on it with my clever ness.  Now, these are serious flapjacks for the serious jackflapper, so if you’re not ready to get into it, just go on and surf for some lolcat jive.  But if you want the real deal, start by mixing some dry ingredients:

2 cups flour
3 T granulated sugar
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t allspice
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t salt

I know it sounds like a lot of spices but it worked out to be very well-balanced.  Also, I am not used to baking with baking soda, but it turns out to be an awesome leavener.  Yay leavening!

Next, start pulling together wet ingredients, as if I have to ask you twice:

1 cup pumpkin puree
2 T vegetable oil
2 T apple-cider vinegar
2 egg yolks

Mix these up in a bowl.  Then pull out a good-sized micro-safe measuring cup and heat up:

1 t dark molasses

until it’s runny; then add

1-1/2 cup milk. 

This ensures that the molasses is well-mixed into the milk, and therefore into the batter, so it doesn’t just puddle up in one spot like some kind of blackstrap booger.  Add the molassesmilk to the other wet ingredients and mix them again.

You still got those two egg whites left over from the yolking, right?  Right?  Okay, fish them out of the disposal, then, I’ll wait.

Okay, two egg whites

- whip’em into soft peaks, and who knows those better than me?  I started with a beater but moved to a whisk because I couldn’t stand the noise, but do what works best for you.  Beating eggs is fun and gratifying!  Foamy albumen for everybody!

Set aside the foamy albumen, already, and stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, or vice versa - just, whichever way you go, don’t over-mix.  The vinegar in the wet will foam up when it hits the baking soda, and you want to leave the bubbles in place if you can.  Then fold in - gently, you cad - the egg whites.  This is now a nice fluffy batter. 

Fry them up about 1/3 cup at a time on a medium-hot skillet.  I think they’d probably be good with some powdered sugar sprinkled on top but that’s just icing on the cake, so to speak.  They’re amazingly good just straight with some maple or agave syrup.  So when you’re done with your jack-o-lantern, you can turn it into pancakes!  Assuming you jack-o-lanterned one of those sugar pumpkins that’s good fer eating, which is pure craziness, but hell, that’s why I love ya, ya punkinhead.  Now get out of here and eat some candy already afore the zombies getcha! 

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Trolley Dances, or BoogieBus

man alive, my little notebook is filling up with goofball nonsense of the sort anyone who’s read this site would justifiably expect of me, but I really don’t have time right now for the transcription thing so the Pops essay and the old music essay and the English student on the bus will all have to wait a little longer.  Meantime, I can still share these photos from the Trolley Dances event from last weekend:

The first dance was an aerial deal on the roof of, and against the side of, a cafe just off the castro.  I’m sorry I didn’t get a shot of the pantomime show that preceded it; I was holding a squirmmonkey, but it was pretty cute.  However, this vertical dance kicked its ass both literally and figuratively. 

Here’s Sha and Helena enjoying the old-style trolley ride to the next dance venue…

That “next venue” I mentioned was a modernist fountain in the civic center’s UN Plaza.  Here’s a few shots of a few of the dozen or so dancers who rocked that house, as it were:

(okay I fiddled with this one a little but it came out cool, right? plus I loaded it twice as a thumbnail but I’m not sure that’s working, so sorry about the huge weirdness, and don’t expect to hear that from me again anytime soon)

From the UN fountains, we were led by a troupe of tap dancers about one block down the street to an underground Muni station, where they took full advantage of the marble floors to demonstrate their archaic but riveting arts, and I’m sorry that the crowds prevented me from photographing their sequined shoes for your entertainment:

Their dances completed, we were ushered onto the N-Judah and rode out to Duboce Park, where we enjoyed one final performance - a Greek-inspired fable-in-dance, the moral (and plot) of which I cannot fathom, but which was feelingly performed to the accompaniment of the largest digeridoo I have ever seen, and buddy, I’ve seen some big’uns:

and of course, just because I can’t not be an architecture geek, here’s a shot I really like that I snapped during the Tap-Dance Strut down to Muni, of the old Strand Theater backed up by the new Federal Courthouse building.  The facades seem to me really to play well off each other.

On an unrelated subject, Z’s robot costume is coming together really well and tonight we carved us one fine-ass jack-o-lantern, which always puts me in mind of this olde essay about jacking the o’lantern and suchlike.  Hope you’re not sick of it.  If so, push fluids.  Hell, push something, for god’s sake.  Don’t just sit there.  I’ll check in on you later in the week to see if you’re feeling better.  Now get some rest, you knucklehead!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Bored Games

Hey I’m out of town for two days without computer contact with the outside world and that means YOU.  So let’s enjoy the interregnum with this brief list of BOARD GAMES FOR THE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY:

Angry Angry Hippo
Rockem Sockem Peergroup
You Don’t Know What Sorry Is
Ironic Twister
AngryLand
High Ho No Cherry-o
Don’t Break The Ice or Dad Will Fly Into An Unreasoning Rage
Life: Do You Think This Is A Goddamn Game?
Rat Trap
Aggravation
Cooties
Trouble
Risk
Par Government Cheezi

Delightful!  See you when I’m back from Merced, Fresno, Hanford, and Fresno again!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Lassitude

okay, dude from the bus, I promised so I’ll deliver: here’s a little transit tale about the train, and its various rides and riders.  Looking back, maybe I could have made it more interesting but the truth is just as I write it here.  I guess I’m okay with that.

It had already been a really long day.  In retrospect, maybe that’s why it went down the way it did, so to speak.  Maybe I was ready for it. 

I’d been up early, in an unfamiliar (though accommodating) hotel; had a small, cheap, rushed prefab breakfast; endured hours of interview after interview; and then hustled back to the airport to fly away home.  My late flight was delayed and overbooked; I landed in oaktown queasy, roadworn and burned out. But I’d started noticing a strange repetitive pattern: At the Burbank airport - an unusual spike in the number of beautiful women.  On the plane, a cattle call flight which I boarded late when few seats were left, I wedged myself between - two beautiful women.  As I walked out of the airport, more beautiful women.  I was tired, for sure, and not feeling my best, but it was hard not to notice the uptick in ambient hotness.  Sometimes they even chatted me up - clearly out of boredom more than any active interest, but by the time I caught the bus link to BART and yet another lovely lady favored me with adjacency and smalltalk, I had to ask myself what the hell was going on. 

The BART station where the bus delivered us was crowded - much more so than usual.  An A’s game had just let out and the platforms were jammed with fans: mostly young adults, mostly male, mostly toasted and boisterous, a foamy sea of team colors - white, green and yellow.  They shouted and slapped backs, compared team-themed jerseys and hats, and un-self-consciously exchanged guy-hugs.  I could smell cheap beer and footlongs and after the day I’d had, it really wasn’t working for me.  I realized that I had a pounding headache.  The trend I’d noticed toward pulchritude had clearly come to a close. 

Ten long minutes later, my train arrived and I joined the ballcrowd storming the city.  When the doors opened a flood of us flew at them like seat cushions out a busted airplane window.  I was part of a mass exodus from the Coliseum station, seemingly the only one in a suit with two days worth of work on his weary shoulders.  I struggled to mid-car, where some empty slots on the benches promised interim respite. 

Except… every available spot seemed to place me in the middle of a party I was grateful I hadn’t been invited to, leaving me surrounded by high-5’ing drunkards.  I didn’t want to hang out with them on the train any more than I’d relished their presence at the station.  I didn’t want to stand with all my bags, either, but these yahoos were giving me scant choice.

Except…

One seat looked a little more promising.  The other three around it in its little pod were clearly occupied by a very tipsy coterie, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t started at the Coliseum.  I dragged over my bag and my suitcase and my worn-out self and claimed my place. 

At first I considered it improbable that this seat was even available.  Then again, it was a single and the crowd was full of groups, and of course, there was the intimidation factor as well.  Maybe some dudes were nervous about sitting with that crowd. But really, what were they going to do, make fun of me?  I somehow didn’t expect that to happen.  As I settled in with a muted “hello” I felt that I’d taken the seat reserved for me by fate.  I am sure I noticed a bunch of dudes tracking my choice. 

To my left sat a slender young woman in toreador jeans, short stylish heels, and a tight black sweater; across from her lounged a well-nourished young woman with a great tan, a flat, bare midriff, well-fitted white trousers and a bikini-top halter that cupped her substantial mammaries in a pair of sparkly knit pouches tied enticingly behind her neck; next to her - across from me - was a tall, slim, leggy young woman in a black microskirt, strappy shoes with clear latex spike heels and a crop-collar top that somehow managed to be both demure and slutty.

They were leaning together, gossiping, giggling.  I kept my earbuds in as a show of respect and restraint and pulled out my notebook to read some old essays, since I was pretty sure I’d be too distracted to do any serious writing.  Within a few moments, my seatmates were passing around a bottle of a highly diluted brown liquid, and then the blonde across from me leaned forward to initiate a conversation:

“You ride BART very often?” She turned back to her haltered friend and chortled.  “Sounds like a pickup line: ‘Do you come here often?’” I grinned ruefully.  I was double her age - it was not a pickup line.  It was, at best, a practice flirt.  I opted not to grab the bait like some rapacious old catfish; rather, I leaned into the back of my seat and locked her eyes with quiet self-possession as I pulled out an earbud.  I answered her; she offered a comeback; the conversation stumbled as the train sped on rubber wheels through bayside Oakland.  All three joined in, asking a predictable round of benign questions - how often I flew for work, what I did, what I was writing.

I deflected each inquiry with a few brief words.  Eye contact was steady and unflinching.  Keep it above the clavicle, I reminded myself, as they started pulling out the big flirt guns.  First the leggy blonde started squirming on her seat as she chatted me up, ineffectually tugging on her tiny skirt’s elevated hemline; then she leaned over to the halter chick and attentively - and none too gently - adjusted the other’s boobcups, tweaking the upper edge of the fabric to reaffirm nippular coverage.  It was hard not to smirk at the blatant display of unvarnished wiles. 

Finally, the toreadorette to my left rotated toward me, initiating full-on conversational intercourse - which was mostly along the lines of how the three of them were high school friends, now attending a not-too-nearby university together; they were riding in from the old neighborhood of their common youth to attend a bit of a party some guy of their acquaintance was throwing near the Embarcadero.  They all kept taking dainty but regular sips from their bottles of pale brown refreshment, and batted their eyebrows endlessly.  It was tag-team chat-flirt badminton, and I felt like the shuttlecock. 

As we left the west Oakland station and descended into the transbay tube, all three of them started pulling longer, luster swigs from the rapidly-depleting bottles of cocktails they were passing around.  At Embarcadero station they dragged themselves to their feet and prepared to hit the street: they’d failed to ensnare me as a trial conquest, but it was understood that I wasn’t really in season. 

As they slinked out across the gap between our still-crowded train car and the station landing, a bleary A’s fan shouted out at their posteriority, “Sluts on the train!” His slurred slur fell loudly and flatly to the rubberized floor and lay there, repugnant and embarrassing.  He’d soundly confirmed my choice of seats.  Better a friendly slut any day of the week, I thought to myself, than to sit next to a boor like you.

and now, off to the playground with Z, and then maybe to find him more accouterments for his halloween costume.  He’s going to be an alphabetical robot.  Yeah, it was his idea, but it’ll be cute anyway.  It’s a gorgeous day; I get to stop wearing a bandage over my sutures later this afternoon; bargaining begins in earnest; and we enjoyed the hell out of the Trolley Dances yesterday.  Details when the calendar eases up.  Till then, enjoy your ride - wherever it takes you…

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Pumpkining

I know that I promised that dude on the bus that I’d be writing about the Hot Chix on BART thing, but I gotta take this out of sequence: today Z and I met up with Dave and Kim and their kids at a county-run “Fall Festival” up outside of Petaluma.  It was a real hoot, especially since I had a 2-year-old with me.  It was interesting to note that this was in no way a halloween event - no ghosts or monsters or any whiff of the supernatural or hereditarialy religious, just acoustic guitar music and pumpkin painting and lots of 4H stuff.  It was a gorgeous day and I’d like to think we made the most of it, even though they didn’t have pumpkinpults.  HERE IS THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: LOOK UPON IT, YOU, AND COWER.  Or whatever. 

They had a hay-bale maze.  Z has been playing with mazes so he was pretty excited to try this one out.

As evidence of the satanic thrall gripping the entire san francisco bay area by its collective and quivering loins, here is the display of painted pumpkins.  Have you ever seen such a display?  Won’t somebody think of the children?

In the big creepy barn, one side was dedicated to taxidermy of local mammals (bear, boar, mountain lion, coyote, that think luke had to crawl into on that ice planet, stuff like that), there was a live barn owl living up near the peak of the roof, and then the other side had a blacklight room full of animal bones, snake skins, bits of fir and tooth and jaw, and of course, the traditional autumn festival jellyfish.  Lip-smacking good, I tell ya, and plus alsoly I did not mess with the color on this one at all.

Later in the big creepy barn, Z ran from taxidermy.

Just outside the big creepy barn, I had a creative moment.  so sue me. 

And finally, Z asked me to take a photo of him with this squash.  He was very persuasive. 

The sexy BART ride, later.  For now, this really seems like the most important stuff. 

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Shortieville-Snippettown Limited

A shortie and three snippets:

SHORTIEVILLE:

So, I’m doing a staff interview – this time, with a feisty young intake monitor.  We’re just getting started; I’m setting up a page for my notes.  I want to be cordial and put her at her ease, so I discreetly check my agenda so I can slip her name into the conversation.

Ouch.  Is that right?  I mean, I’m hardly in a place to judge but that is one unfortunate last name.  If it’s right.  Let’s not jump to conclusions.

“So Hi, A*, I hope you’re well, I’m Dan, thanks for clearing some time to talk with me.  Now, I’m sorry, could you help me with how you pronounce your last name?”

She looks at me like I’m an idiot.  “Perez.  It’s actually a pretty common name.”

“Ah, that makes sense.  I just got confused checking my agenda here.  They left out the ‘r.’”

SNIPPETTOWN:

* Common visual error: I am reading lots of documents these days that reference “Audit materials.” I keep on thinking, on first glance, that they’re talking about “Adult materials.” Not like I’m disappointed.  Fiscal standards and practices – very sexy stuff, and fun for the whole fan-damnily!
* Rule for living: Start small – then stop completely.
* Best search phrase to have brought a visitor to this site in many a month: “Kitten Prolapse Bowl.” A check today shows that I’m no longer even in the top 100 for that particular string.  Maybe this post will help.  I can’t be left behind on the Kitten Prolapse Bowl bandwagon! 

That is all.  Good day to you, sir.  I said Good Day! 

Monday, October 15, 2007

Mortality: Coiled and Ready to Strike

Today I stayed home from work and got a speck of squamous carcinoma carved out of my head; I’ve now got a delightful inch-long gash in my forehead that will need to get de-stitched in two weeks, during which time I will probably wear a hat all the time whenever I step out in public.  This puts me in mind of the eternal verities, the true nature of life, and the limitations of this animal flesh we inhabit.  And as it so happens, I’ve got a bit of a screed on that very subject, so let’s have it, shall we?

First it was the owl.  I got up early one morning and decided, capriciously, not to go to the gym – I’d run through the park instead.  The new day was dark but clear, and dew was just forming.  Though I hadn’t run in weeks the path was so easy and familiar that I really hadn’t even broken a sweat as I rounded the far end of the rose garden and headed east along the edge of the redwood grove.  I was drinking deep draughts of the cold clean air that welled up from the densely wooded ravine beside me, my heart and shoulders and legs and eyes all working in unison to propel me more vigorously on my predawn way, when suddenly something flashed past a few feet from my face and into the woods, wide and white and soundless.  Without breaking stride I peered into the trees and found it quickly – a good-sized barn owl, perched on a nearby bough, watching me watch it, head swiveling iconically to track me as I ran.  I nodded as I ran and I swear it nodded back.

Then it was the raccoon.  Z and me were on our way out for a rather long stretch of inside time, so I wanted to start off at a playground so he could burn off some juvenile steam.  But it was Sunday and many of the car routes through the park were closed, so I seized upon the inexplicable idea that we should instead visit a meadow across the street from a picturesque lake on our way out to the highway. 

As I pulled over I couldn’t help but notice the prominent sign reserving the meadow for some corporate-sounding picnic.  I re-figured that we’d just make do tramping the paths by the margins of the lake itself.  We shortly found ourselves at the foot of a trail looking into filtered sunlight through the woods for a clearing where Z could do some playful exploring. 

“Daddy, what’s that?,” he calmly asked me, clutching my finger with his whole fist.

“What’s what?,” I glibly replied, still gazing in my unfocused way toward the trees.

“That!” With his free hand he pointed a yard or two in front of us.  In the center of our path, curled quietly and blended into the equinoctial colors of the landscape, lay a good-sized raccoon.  It looked fine, well-furred and well-fed, its humanoid feet relaxed like a baby’s little hands, but black and sharp-nailed.  Its eyes were closed; its mouth, relaxed. 

There was only one explanation: the coon was dead.  I didn’t know how to explain that to Z, though.  I would up saying something about it being a raccoon, that we shouldn’t touch it, that it was dirty.  He stood rooted to the spot, staring at the immobile little animal. “It’s sleeping,” he eventually concluded.  “Something like that,” I deflected. “Let’s play over there.” And with that we went back across the road and spent the next few minutes kicking his little mini-soccer ball along the slender verge abutting the gutter.  I never checked, but I assume that the raccoon’s body was removed in due course.  I know, however, that it remains lodged securely in my mind.  I wonder if Z still remembers it. 

Since then we’ve had an invasion of ants in our kitchen, now quelled by dint of much pesticide and thumb-crushing; there was also the “bee hole” at the handiest neighborhood playground, back in a corner near the play structure and the basketball court, where hundreds of wasps shuttled in and out on their diligent way from a creepy dark fistula debouching from under a neighbor’s fence.  Now all that seems cleared up too, with nothing left of the industrious hymenopterae but a scant handful of their corpses strewn in front of the now-quiet cave that had been their home.

And then this weekend Kel and I were wheeling Z’s stroller back homewards after a civilized ramble through the formality of the museum concourse, with stops at an amateur art show and through the echoing old tunnels and in a playground full of squealing kids.  We cut up through the wooded path from the pristine Eden of the huge arboretum, towards the rectilinear plots of the rose garden that would lead us back out of the park - a path we knew intimately, a short sheltered path bordered on one side by the back end of the Tea Garden and on the other by the east slope of Stow Lake hill. 

The sky was steel grey and sound was muffled by the verdure surrounding us; we were crossing past the site of the old lingam shrine when I saw a grey streak coming down the hill in our general direction.  “Coyote,” I said with sufficient urgency to draw Kel’s and Z’s attention to it, but not so loud, I hoped, to spook it further.  It was a good-sized animal, with clear eyes and a thick coat, and as it dashed down the densely-overgrown hillside it threw us a wary but confident glance.  In an instant it was gone, but not before even Z had gotten a good look at it. 

I’ve seen coyotes before, and even seen them in the park, but never on the run in broad daylight.  A few yards further down the path we stopped to visit a makeshift shrine where the lingam had once stood, now replaced with old carved stone, raw rocks, and branches and vases and plates.  In the center of the crude new shrine had been placed some dog tags and a small picture frame containing a handwritten message – a farewell to two animals, tender and touching till the end, when the author, in a looping feminine hand, vowed vengeance on whomever had taken her pets’ lives – “so help me God.” In the serenity of the shrine, her words rankled.  In the fleeting shadow of the coyote, the shrine itself felt like an intrusion. 

Birds and beasts and bugs, living and dead and hunting and hunted.  Any of them by themselves wouldn’t have aroused in me a second thought.  Now, though, they get me thinking - thinking that Mother Nature is trying to tell me something, but damned if I can figure out what it is.  I’d just better make sure I’m up to date on all my vaccinations. 

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Hoppy Days

We were walking in a part of the park we don’t usually visit, up near the model yacht pond and Chain of Lakes, when Kel suggested peeling off on a track she knew of through the piney woods.  We dutifully followed into the carpeted cocoon of the woods, the air chirpy and dusty and charged with ozone and potential.  The path pushed up a knoll; along it stood small tired-looking wooden constructions every hundred yards or so.  Low thick balance beams, chunky zig-zag joists, a set of hanging-bars – it was all extremely simple, built of 4x4 beams and wrought steel rods.  Beside each of those stations, as we walked up the hill, was a placard set into a wooden frame, explaining how the equipment there should be utilized for general fitness purposes.  The placards were faded from sun and fog; the wood was all weathered to a skeletal grey and riven with moss.  Everything looked thirty years old and rather tired. 

“It’s a par course,” Kel noted.

“How 1970s,” I snarked in response.  But really, isn’t it?  Par courses were the it thing back in the day, what with the running from station to station and the cycles of different exercises and the little shorts and the thick moustaches and sideburns and all.  They seem very much of an era to me – the Ford-Carter era.  And this particular par course really seemed to connect directly to that heritage. 

I was thinking as we peregrinated how strange it was that a sliver of 1975 could have been transplanted to my here-and-now, when two men jogged up.  One wore shorts cut high on the outer thighs; the other wore midlength cotton trunks with contrasting piping.  Both wore cotton t-shirts in strong simple colors.  Their hair was bushy and was long enough to cover their ears; one had a moustache that was luxuriantly thick.  Both sported sideburns.  Big’uns. 

They ran up to a station just down the hill from us – one with a framed placard that described the “hop-kick.” This exercise requires no weathered wooden equipment: one hops up on one leg, and then kicks up high with the other foot; reverse; repeat.  Maybe it’s good exercise, but one thing is for sure: it makes you look silly as hell.

These two guys start doing their hop kicks, garish shorts and bushy sideburns and all.  Lift-hop-kick-switch-lift-hop-la la la… They watched their feet and legs with rapt seriousness as they wordlessly worked out.  After several rounds, they both stopped their exercapers and trotted on up the hill to the next station, to do chin-ups or squat thrusts or something.  I was left wondering if perhaps this wasn’t so much a piece of the 70’s transplanted to the modern world, as it was a reversionary rift, where now turns back to then and the 70s never went away.  It’s an interesting theory, anyway.  I’d have asked those two dudes but I think they went back home to watch Emergency. 

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

PALINDROMES THAT SEEM TO BE ABOUT ME, SOME OF WHICH I WROTE

Nadm I’m Dan.*
A Dan, a clan, a canal – Canada!
A Dan, a plan, a canal – Panada!*
Poor Dan is in a droop.
Pandanap!*
No, Dan – I gave, man!  Name vagina “Don.”
Is le gonad?  Dan ogles I.*

(*: Made it up myself.  And incredibly, the other ones were actually out there in lists of palindromes as if someone else spent precious brain power making them up on their own!)

So, what can you do with YOUR name?  I mean, in public? 

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

New Change

I was, again, on the bus, in my seat, watching the afternoon fade into evening outside the window, listening to something on my headphones I’d probably memorized months, if not years, prior, when someone boarded who could not be ignored. 

In the crowded center aisle stood a shaveheaded Irish-looking lout with big tribal tats, a tight t-shirt over tight muscles, and faded fatigue pants; behind him was a tall, slim, pretty, and fashionable office chick in patent pumps and a short but demure skirt. 

And between these two he inserted himself, pushing on board through a back door into an already heavy crowd.  He wore worn stained jeans and a statue of liberty t-shirt; on his knapsack he’d pinned another t-shirt, folded so only its iron-on message was displayed – something about the Bush Crime Family.  He wore three armbands with the symbol of the Puerto Rican flag on each arm, and a ball cap on his head with the Cuban flag on it.  His skin was coffee-brown and looked almost oiled; his hair was short and tightly curled, and he carried a big sign with him as he worked his way on board and between the lout and the chick. 

His sign was about three feet by four, carefully hand-lettered on both sides in several lines of black printing on white foamcore that he’s clearly protected with careful diligence.  It was hard to read what it said through the crowd; I could just pick out words like “respect,” “people,” “rights”, “gay,” and such.  He had a message to share that was just busting out of him – you could see it in the gladsome way he sought eye contact with everybody around him as he insinuated himself into the crowd, and soon enough, that message got shared out loud:

“Hey, how’s all the liars and the crooks?  Is the mayor a playah?  Haha, it’s okay it’s okay, if you VOTE FOR OBAMA FOR A NEW CHANGE!  New Change!  Don’t let’em tellya we not ready.  We ready!  Ready!  Ready for change!  Am I right?  We gonna have to bring the blacks and the latinos into the capital markets!  We can’t have all the capital concentrated in the hands of just the white people!  I’m just sayin’!  That’s no offense to any white people here on this bus, but we got to achieve equality!  New change!  Big change!  Because otherwise, Clinton’s in with all them finance people and the big money!  You gotta have vision and break free!”

He starts to manipulate his big clumsy sign, making it nearly impossible for those around him to continue to ignore him.  “You guys can read it now,” he advises us cheerfully, though we really can’t – he keeps moving it around and there are too many people jamming up the sightlines anyway.  He’s waving it up and down, eventually holding it sideways so it’s marginally less obtrusive upon his neighbors, who seem assiduously to be staring at their pantcuffs.  “Well, anyway,” he concludes, realizing, perhaps, that his sign really is unreadable in this venue, and that he’s alienating all the white capitalists surrounding him.  “Okay.  Vote Obama For A New Change!” The bus pulls over at Leavenworth and he gets out.  The Irishish lout looks visibly relieved.  The stylish young woman does not change her expression one bit.  She hadn’t so much as batted an eyelash the whole damn time. 

Friday, October 05, 2007

Head Job - plus bluenus bograss!

Sometimes it feels like my head is about to rip itself open with frustration, boredom, irritation, angst.  There are too many reasons to become hypersensitive to the delicate integument separating my pristine interiority from the foulness of the greater universe without.  But all that is analogy, or idiom, or something like that.  I cradle my head in my hands and feel the implosion or the crushing or just imagine that the world is peeling back my skin and leaving me open to all that from which I wish to protect myself.  It’s a rather delicate feeling.

However, it’s also true that I am liable occasionally to do myself a bit of actual physical damage.  Sometimes the imaginary lacerations inflicted by an uncaring reality are secondary to the real cuts and welts I wreak upon my tender cranium. 

Perhaps an example or three would be informative: This week I’ve been sporting evidence of three acts of violence done upon my face and head – one entirely by accident, one by accidental application of intentional forces, and one purely pursuant to a well-considered plan.  In one case, I was cleaning up a few stray whiskers above my upper lip where the electric shaver sometimes doesn’t get the whole job done, and I neatly sliced a big gash right under my nose.  It’s hard to miss, especially when I ripped it open again in a YMCA yoga class with an inopportune swipe of an unexpectedly rough gym towel.  Pure class, dude.  Is that snotty blood, or bloody snot?  In either case, there was plenty of room around me on the bus. 

And also: one bleary morning this week I was rushing around cleaning up after myself, putting away my slippers and yesterday’s clothes and other effluvia left thoughtlessly on the bathroom floor, and when I stood up I discovered a towel rack had suddenly (20 years prior) been affixed to the wall in a region through which my head was rapidly moving.  What I’m saying is, I smacked the towel rack with the back of my head, knocking it off the wall and significantly gashing the back of my nicely-shaved scalp.  That wound still looks rather gruesome, but at least I can hide it on the bus under a hat, and for some bizarre reason, it never hurt except when I poured alcohol on it.  So, that’s good, I guess.  Relatively speaking.

But the real winner is the little tiny nick on my forehead, where this past Monday a kindly dermo snipped off a bit of flesh that didn’t seem like it was getting along with the rest of my head.  The procedure was relatively painless; the surgical site is healing nicely and the whole area feels a lot better now.  But, confirming my suspicions, the biopsy came back today as positive for a small and highly removable spot of squamous cell cancer.  I’ll go back in another week or so for a more substantial procedure, which will leave me with stitches for a fortnight and a scar pretty much permanently thereafter. 

I’m not concerned about the cancer – it was caught early, it’s got clean margins, and it’s good that my vigilance has been worthwhile and well-focused.  However, I can’t say I’m exactly happy about being diagnosed with a malignant condition.  Maybe it will help me take better care of myself in the long run – fewer self-inflicted head wounds and such.  I’d like to think I’d come up with that idea all on my own, but if that’s what I get out of cancer, maybe I can chalk it up to silver linings. 

Further to the plus side, this weekend is Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a world-class concert festival held in my own backyard, or in Speedway Meadow, which is certainly close enough.  Five stages, all free, all day long.  I’ll spend Saturday at the Star Stage with The Subdudes, The Knitters, John Prine, Keller Williams, Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, and if I can manage it, Los Lobos; that means I’ll be missing such luminaries as Michelle Shocked, T Bone Burnett, Steve Earl, Gillian Welch, Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby, and Big Dan Reeder, among many others.  Sunday we’ll meet friends at the Rooster Stage for Jim Lauderdale, Welsch-Kane-Kaplan (heard them on KPIG recently and loved them immediately), Charlie Louvin, a songwriter circle with four dudes I don’t know much about, JORMA!, Dave Alvin, and (if I can stand it) Galdalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams.  And that doesn’t include other luminaries on other stages, like Secret Life of Banjos, the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, Hot Buttered Rum, and Del McCoury – among many other others.  Monday’s a holiday so I can sleep it off.  I might need part of Tuesday too.  It’s been a long week, and it’s going to be a long weekend.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Smiles, Everybody - Smiles!

I looked up and it was five o’clock, and then 5:40, and then 6:15.  I’d had a lot of work to do so I’d put my head down and did it.  I think it was going on seven when I stepped out to the elevator lobby.  I was just starting to take stock of my own physical tiredness and tension, and I sort of sensed a tipping point. I had a choice to make.  I felt like a clenched fist.  I could either leave that static tension behind me there at the office, or I could carry it out onto the bus and right back home with me.  And it was at that very moment I was favored with an intervention.  The smiling lady got me, and suddenly my choice had been made for me. 

Used to be, I had a sweet Latina bubbeleh who’d come daily to my work area at 6 or 6:30 to clean stuff up.  She was very polite and certainly nice enough. Honestly I don’t even really remember her very well.  Sometimes a cute young woman stood in for her - even politer, very understated.  She, too, seemed nice enough, but not particularly distinguished, other than that I recall that she was pretty cute.  Or something.  Details have faded.

Moving along, the subsequent successor to this assignment was a swarthy, heavyset man.  His beard was always some variation of a stubbly grizzle, his gut hung lewdly over his belt, he slouched and he scowled.  I’d say “hello,” extend the basic courtesies – he’d glower at me as if he were just waiting for a chance to poleaxe me.  He once watched a door slam right in my face, not lifting a finger to stop it; one other time he wouldn’t swipe me in to my work area when I’d left my access card at my desk, though I’d said hello to him there not five minutes earlier.  He was not a nice guy, and I didn’t like him.  I was glad to see him go.

Then, perhaps by way of a karmic make-up, we got the smiling lady.  She’s matronly, a little heavy, with large eyes and careful hands.  She smiles when she sees people, with a smile like I’ve never seen before.  It is gentle, loving, welcoming, and forgiving; it is more fulfilling than my favorite breakfast served in bed; it is peace and release, it is succor and redemption.  This woman smiles from the depths of her soul and when she shares it with me I can feel it in the very center of my being.  And somehow, she imbues that smile into every little thing she says and does.  Even just a “good evening” seems like a joyful benediction from this lady, as she separates my recyclables from my garbage.  All she need say is “good evening”, and that smile fills you up to the top of your heart. 

And when a disaster struck her old village, she shared her concern and anxiety with us in halting English, explaining that her village is small and far up in the mountains and barely has power on good days, and my heart just bled for her, and all those unimaginable Andean villagers she was so frightened for as well.  I stammered some words of hopeful consolation but it sounded hollow to me; regardless, she gave me a slow sweet smile and went on her way.  Somehow, even though she was heartbroken and exhausted and I really had nothing to complain about in the world, she wound up making me feel better.  This lady is like a spa treatment for my emotional condition.  I like her just fine. 

Then, one day a few weeks ago, at about 5:45, a very nice young man rolled his rumbling trundlebin of supplies and refuse to my workstation.  “Evenin’, sir,” he ritually intoned, grinning easily and moving efficiently to clear my trash before he’d even bothered me…. He seemed like a good enough kid, but my heart fell nonetheless.  Where was the smiling lady?  Was she okay?  Had they taken her away from me?

No, I assured myself, it’s just a one-time thing.  She’ll be back.  Tomorrow.  She might even still show up tonight.

But she didn’t, not that night, nor the next.  She just kept not being there until, after a week of increasingly-poignant nightly disappointments, I gave up.  The smiling lady was a memory.  The new kid was the new kid. 

So, I’m leaving the office. The day’s been backloaded, with a stultifying three-hour meeting at the start and an semi-Sisyphean build-up of tasks over the course of the afternoon with, of course, the messiest, most aggravating job of all saved for last.  I’m walking out with my jaw set, my brow beetled, and a whole evening ahead of me for stewing in that day’s festering juices.  My bag swings low and lean on my shoulder as I muscle out of the auto-closing door and head to the elevators. 

Up the hall, then a left to the unadorned tedium of the lift lobby itself.  I stride efficiently to the wall and punch my “down” into the callplate with an armload of lingering office energy, when, from the opposite end of the hall, I’m hit square in the heart by a big warm smile.  “Hello, good evening,” is all she says, but boy oh boy she makes it count…. The smiling lady, in her green smock, her hair in its netted bun, her eyes warm and clear, pushes her jumbo castered dustbin around the corner.  I’m so glad to see her there; I struggle to stammer some kind of greeting. She just keeps that smile turned on me until my ‘vater comes and I ride alone downstairs. 

As the numbers descend on the panel in front of me, that smile still reverberating around me, I feel the mess on my desk fading into irrelevance.  And as I ride home on my bus, regaining my perspective and my energy with every block of the route, I feel intense gratitude for my intervention from the smiling lady.  I’ll never underestimate again what a difference a smile can make at the end of a long scowly day.  Or at any rate, one of her smiles.  Hers may have more going for them than most do, but I’m going to emulate her if I can.  I’d like to think of that smile as an inspirational goal. 

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Brain Drain

Hey, back at work and too busy for the likes of you but HERE‘s a quick note about something maybe we should be crapping ourselves in fear about.  I don’t know about you but after reading this I’m going to start wearing noseclips around town as a prophylactic measure.  I have no interest in accidental exposure to this bit of global warming run amok.  Between this and that fish that swims up the river of darkness, I’m just going to dip myself in latex and wait for plague to strike me.

Now let’s be safe out there, or something is going to crawl up your olfactory and eat your noggin from the inside out!  Yay nature! 

Monday, October 01, 2007

Meat

I cannot call this anything but a story, because Robert told it to me and he had heard it from someone who had heard it from someone else.  And as I heard it, I couldn’t help but sense an inevitability that made me think that maybe I’d even heard this story before.  However, I can’t bring myself to Snopes it.  I want to believe it, even a little more than I want to believe that it never really happened.  So without any claim to veracity, here’s what I heard:

An old Chinese lady holding a live chicken waited to board the 30 Stockton.  “Lady,” snapped the driver as he pulled up but refused to let her board, “you can’t take live chickens on the bus!”

She snapped its neck and calmly boarded. 

Moral: Though there’s no I in team, it’s completely filled with meat.