Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Pair the Second: Sartorial Inscription Mentations

It’s been a busy day in Chuckleland, and the post I’d hoped to foist upon you before noon today now might - just might - get up before midnight.  In lieu of an off-color joke skulking in the corners of that prior sentence, I choose to offer my second “pair” posting in a row - a pair of pairs, rendering me vulnerable to a full house if you’ve got one.  Lacking that, enjoy this - I dare you!

A Pair of Mentations Regarding Sartorial Inscription, by Chuck L. Hutt

* The boy sat across from me, slouching on the plastic bus bench with the look of embarrassed boredom borne of maternal proximity - and indeed, his mom was sitting right next to him, with flabby biceps and an overbearing scowl.  The boy wore a red sweatshirt with white lettering, which I compulsively tried to read.  I’ve got to be reading this wrong, I thought.  Does his sweatshirt actually say, “PATHETIC”?  I abandoned all pretense of subtlety and took a nice hard gander.  Yes, his sweatshirt says “PATHETIC”.  What was his mother thinking?  There’s no way he was old enough to buy his own clothes, how could she OH! I see now: as the boy shifts in his sullen antpantitude, he reveals a few missing letters - two in front, one in the middle.

Not “PATHETIC.” “(GA)P ATH(L)ETIC.” Well then.  I guess that’s okay.  Carry on. 

* I leave the bus and cross the intersection the first of twice, to find myself waiting for my next walk signal next to the hand-out guy.  He’s in the ‘hood a lot these days.  A filthy man with matted chaotic hair, his skin is dark, stained darker from a sidewalk life.  He’s missing several teeth and his clothes are execrable: tattered jacket and pants that shine with grime, a once-red t-shirt hanging from his sunken chest, threadbare, shabby.  He’s learned a little English over the past few months; where once he’d stammer a perhaps-Tagalog jangle with his palms extended in supplication, now he asks for change in an English that’s weak, heavily accented, but at least intelligible.  Today as I stand next to him he’s asking again, dime or quatah sah?  He extends toward me a receptacle for my hoped-for generosity: a black baseball cap so dirty that its very blackness has been blackened.  I shrug my apology to him and he repays me with a jagged smile.  I notice the legend embroidered on the back of his outthrust cap - the name of a television show.  I wonder if he’s ever seen it.  I wonder if he even knows that it says “Lost.” To me, it seems entirely apropos. 

There you go then, chew on that in good health and from your blog to god’s ear.  Back later, but not later tonight, with another pair or so of whatever it is I seem to be doing here.  These are the jokes, folks.  I’m here all week. 

Monday, July 28, 2008

Pigmental Monday

The plan was to write something last night, but a load of DVR’d goodies got in the way.  Then I was going to write this morning on the bus, but that didn’t happen for reasons that I’m likely to make a subject of a subsequent post because I have my topic in mind and I’m not the sort to switch ruts on a mere whim.  I intend to share with you a pair of mentations on the general subject of color, and now I get to freehand it.  I do have a rather free hand sometimes, but it’s been a while since I’ve exercised it here.  Let’s see how much trouble I get into.  (dangling preposition: half-point off before I start.  Way to go, Chuckles.)

a) The hallway is done.  Our apartment has a somewhat unusual configuration for a city place, but still features a long hallway off of which most of our rooms devolve.  Since we’ve moved in, the hall has been a transitional space - not a place in and of itself, but a place between places, a trans-place.  Poorly lit, painted in the degraded tone of Navajo White, pocked from the various decorations sporadically hung there to brighten an essentially unbrightenable space (by ourselves as well as prior tenants in the 1980s), we’d pretty much given up on it as a habitable environment on its own terms. 

The solution: change its terms!  Two weekends ago I got a nice can of off-orange paint and a smaller can of cheerful white, and we painted everything but the edges and trim.  (for my peroration on the impact of painting a ceiling white, see here.) The change was significant, but incomplete - a ragged blot of washed-out grey still circumscribed our improvements and set limits to its impact.  So this weekend we finished by painting the walls right up to the edges of the ceiling and floor.  This moved the visual impact from a unmistakeable but crude enhancement, to refined completion.  Those strips of old dingy white that lined the tops and bottoms of the walls had not just been reminders of where we’d started, they were anchors to an aesthetically-impaired history of possibilities left unexplored and compelled vacancy.  By completing the process of filling the entire space with rich new color, we created a chromatic coherence that obviates all sense of the past. 

Now, looking down the hallway, I see something I’ve never seen before: the future.  It glows warmly in the ruddy morning sunlight; it reflects the wan illumination from the weak, garrish electroliers, making the most of the artificial light we’ve got.  There is a cleanliness and purity in the lines at ceiling and floor, and as the floorboards reach out into the distance, they seem to glow with possibility.  The hallway is no longer a trans-space - it almost transcends space.  We want to hang out in it now.  It’s a twenty-foot-long step securely in the right direction. 

b) I don’t write much about Kelly here; she’s not one of those who embraces the publicity of blogdom.  But when she does something extraordinary, I break that habit and let the world know.  When I met her in 1985, I had a semi-full head of nice brown hair, which over the years grew thinner and thinner, and greyer and greyer, till I just gave up on it altogether and started pateshaving.  It’s been about four years now since I’ve traded the hairbrush for the razor, and I don’t regret a bit of it.  However, Kel’s been walking this road by my side for just as long, during which time her dark-brown locks have remained very much as they appeared when I met her - in color, anyway.  This is because she took the time and trouble to make sure they got regularly tinted, just as soon as the first few silver threads appeared in the mix.  Without getting into details, several months ago she decided to put an end to the artificial stasis of her hair color.  She stopped dying, and let it grow.  For several weeks her hair was a bit, oh, split - personality-wise.  At the ends, it remained in masquerade, dark and homongenous, but as the roots grew out they revealed ever-lengthening strands of her own true self: a rich array of monochrome, black and white and silver, filiments at once glowing with absorbed light and shimmering with light reflected. 

And on Saturday, I took the boy out on a bus ride and to a playground and a puppet show, while Kel got her ends cut off.  By the time Z and I got home, Kel was back as I’ve not seen her in many years - unadulterated in her visual presentation.  Her hair is shorter than it’s been in quite a while, though still thick and full.  However, it’s a glory of tones from white to black and back again.  Unaltered by tints, it has a fresh, natural presence - not unruly, but individualistic.  The imposed sedateness of her longstanding dyejob has been excised and discarded.  Kel has always been a strong, independent individual, and her hair now reiterates that strength and individualism.  I’m really proud of her for taking on the change, and on a more selfish level, I like it better than it was before.  She’s gotten rid of the color, and in doing so, she’s brought back vitality.  Even when I was encouraging her months back to take the plunge, I hadn’t realized how great it would look. 

I could go on, but I really can’t.  Doings are afoot, and all that.  So just remember: color can add or subtract, but it is the viewer upon whom the impression is truly made.  So keep’em open and have a stimulating week! 

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Day that Will Live in Apathy: B’Versary 6

It has never really been either the best or worst of times - it was, in fact, consistently, historically, just “a time.” The day on which, in 1934, the first ptarmigan was hatched and raised in captivity, in Ithaca, New York.  The day of the 1946 Bikini Island atmospheric nuke test.  The day in 1957 on which KTVC TV channel 6 in Ensign, KS began broadcasting, and on which, in 1959, the 500,000th television was registered in the Netherlands.  “Like a Rolling Stone” was released in 1965.  1974: the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Nixon must turn over the Watergate tapes.  Paula Gwynn, 22, was crowned 21st Miss Black America on this day in 1989; Vince Coleman of the Mets injured 3 Dodgers fans by throwing a cherry bomb at them in 1993.  Barry Bonds, Gus van Sand, Linda Carter, Ruth Buzzy and Zelda Fitzgerald were all born on this day, though admittedly in different hospitals; Isaac Bashevis Singer, Peter Sellars, and Martin van Buren chose this day to shake off their respective mortal coils.  Some triumphs were celebrated on this day, and some terrible tragedies were suffered. 

And in 2002, a man with too many words and not enough shame launched the Chucklehut - a blog unlike any other, except for the many similarities it shares with most of them.  Predominantly in the English language, as bastardized by west coast hipsters and wannabe polymaths; lovingly crafted with plentiful ellipses and neologisms; chock full of chock and brimming with cybernetic enthusiasm, the Chucklehut has survived changes in hosting, domain, design, and sophistication.  Today, it represents the epitome of western culture and the apex of American thought.  For this, a nation weeps.  I invite you to join them. 

Today is blogiversary 6, the thought of which shocks and startles me.  Six years?  That’s almost a long time!  For those of you who have stood by me for the duration, of whom there may still be two or three, I proffer my humble thanks.  To the rest of you, I expostulate vituperative indecencies.  How dare you have missed my clumsy Blogger-based beginnings, my foundering coming-of-age posts rife with nascent adolescence, or my great series on stuff I found on the street?  For shame, cybersurfer - for shame. 

But I offer mitigation for your ignominy: below, please find my traditional Top 40 list for the year gone by less one.  From my blogiversary in 2006 till the same date in 2007, I have selected two-score posts that I objectively have determined sucked less than the others during that period did.  That’s not to say they’re good, though some are - but I can definitely say that they’re not as bad as the ones I left off the list.  I hope you enjoy them again, unless you hated them the first time around, in which case I hope you fall prey to a pernicious and embarrassing infirmity.  I don’t need you casting aspersions on this blog.  That’s what I’m here for. 

Without further ado, here are my Top 40 for 2006-2007:

major announcement
flashback; flash forward
plum tasty
fighting traffic
pet peeve
defending the faith
the SHHNing
laborious wrapup plus burger with everything
shrimpy and flaky
jogging my memories
the break
panning for gold
another stupid list
pandora’s box
freak yourself out vol 1: the bathroom nebula
silver spoons
there and back: a saga
aural history
burning impressions
begin the begin
begin the begin in medias res
begin the begin - finally it ends
merkan measures
brother’s keeper
eternal heart
keep it under your hat
his bus
all I need is a little direction in life sometimes
exhumation
A1: failing the grade
MLHB: the transiting
for those who feel
RASFMBT: RIP
bird brain
the bonnie booty rides again
manly rant: feather bested
view from the top
cutting corners
rivertrippin’ plus fruitylicious dancakes
from yesterday generally: y is the forth of july

And there you have it; do with it what you will.  Or vice-versa.  It’s the internet, man.  Anything goes.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope to have something new for your enjoyment sometime soon. 

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Under the “C” - for Conviction

There are an increasing number of people leaving prisons around this state and nation who have paid, as we call it, their “debt to society” and are ready to re-integrate into the outside world.  We’d be better off with their energy and intentions directed toward helping to build better communities, rather than marginalizing them, excluding them, making them resent a world that refuses to re-admit them on fair terms. 

But lots of these previously-incarcerated people find themselves unable to get a job, to rent a home, or otherwise to move forward in the ways most of us take for granted, because so many application forms for life’s basic necessities inquire into one’s history of criminal convictions.  A person who’s made a mistake but paid for it and is ready to move on, should not be obliged to bear that stigma for the rest of his or her life - not only is it a heartlessly disproportionate punishment, but it has negative downstream consequences for everybody.  People who can’t get jobs or places to live are forced into situations that render them much more at risk of reoffending.  It is inimical to the very concept of rehabilitation.

That’s why some innovative legal services programs around California have projects designed to help the previously-incarcerated remove the records of their convictions.  This process is technically known as “dismissal of conviction,” but is colloquially referred-to as “expungement.” These so-called “Clean Slate Clinics” perform a critical and valuable service for those who would otherwise spend a lifetime admitting to a conviction that should no longer be an impediment to their ability to participate fully in their world.  It can change lives, and communities, for the better. 

There’s been interest in disseminating these clinics further around the state, so that more local service providers can help more people to expunge their records.  The clinics are typically conducted in a manner that encourages the people seeking help to do most of the work themselves, with instructions from professionals in a group setting.  I think it would be helpful, in addition, to create educational materials such as an instructional video, to be shown wherever these clinics might be held, explaining the basic rules and offering a roadmap to the forms and procedures involved. 

But educational videos can be very boring, and this would dilute the efficacy of such a strategy.  I think the solution would be to produce videos that capture the attention of a lay audience, ones with, for example, an engaging, self-effacing, charming and funny instructor. 

My suggestion: Dismiss your Conviction with ExpungeBob Squarepants.  This is probably why nobody wants me to make instructional videos. 

Monday, July 21, 2008

Pinkie - RIP is not an acronym

The weekend was a mixed bag, I’m pleased and sorry to say. The fridge bulb has been replaced but still does not illuminate; it looks like a more complicated problem. Ditto the non-functioning a/c in the car - “wiring” is involved.  No exercise was performed, I had disturbing dreams, and many household tasks were not accomplished. On the other hand, many household tasks were accomplished, including repairing the stroller and painting the hallway. We attended a rumaki-laden party at the homes of delightful friends, and I got plenty - plenty! - of sleep.

But then, I found out about this, advertising the upcoming opening of the long-awaited film version of a graphic novel that actually led me to tattoo my living flesh, and it has put me in a contemplative frame of mind. The Hegelian dialectic will govern my opinion of the weekend. I had my share of theses and antitheses, and now I’m ready to synthesize. It’s sort of complicated unless I bring it down to concrete examples, so let me offer this one, jotted initially a few weeks ago on my beloved 38L:

I hesitate at my notebook. Shall I edit, or write something new? A notion for an essay springs to mind. But editing is fun. The empty seat beside me is suddenly taken by a woman in a vibrant fuchsia sweater.  That settles it: I’ll write about the pink shirt. It couldn’t be any more obvious, and it does seem fitting.

The pink shirt now falls into a range of items I’ve mentioned here before - the clothes I’ve worn completely out. These include my original jeans jacket(s), the “serial killer” trench coat from college, several old t-shirts, and many other items I’ve worn to rags over my storied career. I hadn’t heretofore realized that the pink shirt had deteriorated to that level but it appears I’ve been fooling myself. The pink shirt needs an eulogy now. Who better than me to give it?

The late ‘80s were not a time of great self-awareness for your correspondent. Law school, Los Angeles, living with my dad - a whole constellation of circumstances built up, leaving me unaware of my own unawaredness for a pretty decent span of years. Bar prep and seven years of scrambling for a practice didn’t help much on the back end, but this was the beginning, when I had no idea what lay before me. I grew my hair long, wore batik and straw hats, tried to be wry by being cynical. It certainly wasn’t the apex of my creative self-engagement, that’s for sure.

I think I was shopping at Buffalo Exchange but that’s not necessarily true except in a generic sense. It was one of those stores on the secondary boulevards, full of used clothes, smelling like industrial detergents, old cardboard and old people. Circular racks stood stuffed like giant Elizabethan ruffs, and a sufficiently indolent browser could blow a whole afternoon ensuring that there was nothing to buy there that day - but you’d still have to come back two days later to see if anything new had turned up. For LA, this business model seemed to be fairly novel, but unaccountably au courant as well. To my intense gratification, thrifty was chic - and I was thrifty.

Anyway, I went to the store, I bought the shirt. Short sleeves, small collar, little pearlescent buttons, cut straight at the bottom with no drooping tail. It was woven of Egyptian cotton, very well broken in, with a pattern of small pink paisley shapes on an off-white field. According to the label, the original purchaser had been a patron of J.C. Penny; according to my best guess, that would have been around 1978. It was, in its time, whenever that was, a pretty low-key shirt, and so it had remained - a soft, wrinkle-free garment suitable for casual occasions, such as dinner with family, or a rave. It was fortuitously cut so as to accentuate what I considered my best features, and to minimize my worst ones. It also hid stains, went with everything I owned, and withstood the rigors of the top-loader. Although I had initial reservations about its pinkishness, these proved unfounded. The pink paisley button-up wound up being a truly key garment during that late ‘80s phase.

Me and it contined to have some seriously quality times together after law school, too, through my “moving to SF” phase, my “job seeking” phase, my “job slogging” phase, my “job switching” phase, and everything else since then.  In the interim, some pretty good shirts have come and gone, but the pink paisley button-up was stalwart througout.  If I just wanted to look like myself and feel good about it, the PPB was haning in my closet for me for 20 years, ready to mellow things out - sartorially if not otherwise as well. 

A few weeks ago Kel saw me slip the PPB over my head as we prepared to do some local shopping in my uber-casual neighborhood.  Her attention focused on the shirt and I immediatrely sensed danger. “That shirt....” Her voice wavered with the hesitation of one who is totally sure of what she’s going to say but does not know exactly how to broach the subject.  “...It’s probably only good around the house anymore.”

I looked down at myself in disbelief.  “And not,” she continued, certainty ringing in her voice, “around guests.”

“What do you mean, ‘guests’?” It was a lame diversionary tactic to what I suspected was already an inevitability. 

“It’s a great shirt,” she assured me comfortingly.  “I love it.  You love it.  But it’s been around for too long.  It’s done now.  You’ve got to let it go.” Her eyes shone with sympathy and earnestness.  I told her I’d think about it, begrudgingly.  Then I changed my shirt. 

I held off on the decision, even though a critical daylight appraisal demonstrated amply to me that the PPB was indeed now seriously faded, starting to fray at all the hems, and was virtually transparent in places.  Still, it felt comfortable and hung flatteringly on me.  It filled a niche.  It was the only pink clothes I owned.  I wasn’t ready to let go. 

Which brings us to recently: I was wearing lounge pants and pinkie (as the PPB allows only me affectionately to call it), reading on a sunny Sunday morning.  I shifted on my sofa and the shirt slid over me.  I heard a sound, a tiny sound but one I knew only too well: a rending.  As of fabric.
I had to remove pinky before I could find the rip - it’s fairly small, right under the collar.  One might have hoped it was too small to make any difference, but I couldn’t delude myself.  A small rending will soon grow large, and what was once my favorite shirt had just become irrevocably a shmata. 
Pinky’s now in the “archive” pile behind the big laundry hamper in my closet.  I need to clean that pile up but I’m not about to wear anything out of it.  Those things aren’t clothes anymore - they’re mementos.  Speaking of which: remember that old pink shirt I used to have?  Yeah… good times....

(turns out I got it at Jet Rag. whoodathunk.)

Friday, July 18, 2008

Paco on the 14 Mish

I think I have more to say now.  Last night I was tired and wired and stuffed full of nasi goreng borobodur, a dish in which rice is a medium for the injestion of plentiful spicy green peppers.  I met up with Cecily and Sarah in the lobby of the jukebox Marriott and, once the obligatory complaints about it being cold ("and I don’t get cold!") were out of the way and temp tattoos were duly distributed (yay and thanks), we set off on a seven block walk to Borobodur restaurant.  Supper was tasty, rendered moreso by the presence of “other" Sarah, in from Berkeley and therefore prepared for a bit of foggy chill.  After supper we all meandered back to the St Francis where I dropped the ladies off for their BlogHer parties, and I went back home, iPodless (left it at work) and therefore discreetly focusing on other people’s conversations.  There were several, and tragically, they were all as dull as dirt.  Unsharpened dirt.  From there, I can’t say things got any more exciting, so let’s skip ahead a bit:

This morning I dropped the soob off at THE BEST MECHANIC IN CALIFORNIA (contact me for details if you want’em) and walked four blocks to a bus stop.  Down in that part of town the blocks are long, and I brought my camera to snap some shots of whatever I could find that was photogenic.  (This was the same walk that led me, last week, to take that air conditioner photo I posted last night.) I walked up 9th street instead of 10th, to vary the scenery this time, but I found nothing worth memorializing (though there were a few distasteful sights I wish I could erase from my memory).  When I got to the bus stop at Mish and 9th I was feeling physically tired, mentally dull, financially drained (the soob needs a lot of work), and artistically thwarted.  I just stood there in the steady damp breeze, my mood the color of the pavement, and the pavement the color of the the sky.  It was all very nicely coordinated and opened myself to the possibility of possibility.  Thus it was that my bus pulled up.

I don’t often take the 14 Mish; it’s a prole bus like my 38 line but runs to the southwest corner of the city, not due west out to my side of rainbowville.  But sometime the 14 is just what I need and I was glad to see it arrive before my glasses misted completely over.  The door opened in front of me but I stepped back to allow a woman to deboard.  She reminded me of a woman in my ‘hood, homeless and toothless, slim and smoke-steeped.  Her hair is always nicely maintained and colored and she’s consistently friendly and pleasant to me when I pass her on the sidewalk, where she sits with a paperback, a cancer stick, and a cup of coffee.  The woman coming off the bus had the same body type and hair, but her affect was much less sociable - she kept her head down, muttering to me or to herself as she limped down the steps in white sweats and pink nikes.  It took her a while to navigate the exit and to step away so I could board, but I was not impatient.  I figured she had something going on and I didn’t care to get close enough to figure out what it was. 

The bus driver was chuckling as I flashed him my pass and stepped in, pointing his chin toward her as she limped down the sidewalk with a sour expression.  “It’s starting early today, eh?” I wasn’t sure what he meant but he seemed to be an allied soul so I said something innocuously supportive: “Did it ever stop?”

The driver warmed to this response and agreed with me, “No, it probably never did.  It just goes on and on.  Your tax dollars at work!  Well at least it’s Friday...”

I usually sit back in the mid-bus so I can watch the entire comic opera that is mass transit, but this time I had a short ride and seemed to be having the only conversation happening on the 14 Mish so I took an infacing seat at the front right of the bus and opened myself to an interaction with my driver.  He was a man initiating his approach to his middle years, rotund and scragglebearded, with light olive skin and a latino accent.  He was ready to enjoy his ride and take me along for it.  I was game.

“Oh yes, it is Friday; thanks for reminding me.”

“Not that it makes any difference to me, I work Saturday too, but still, there’s that Friday feeling in the air....”

Glancing around the bus I noted a distinct lack of TGIFing.  People coming up from the outer reaches of that route were typically hardworking immigrants who kept to themselves; those riding in from the inner reaches were often junkies or street folk with sketch etched into every line of their weathered faces.  Nobody seemed to be riding in for a party.  It made me curious.  “Do you notice a difference in the ride on weekends?”

“Oh sure!  You don’t see the regulars, the people you see every day.  Sometimes you see somebody for just the one time.  It’s a whole different set of people.”

That was not the answer I was looking for.  “I mean, does the ride feel different?  Is there a different mood?  Do people act differently on weekends than they do on weekdays?”

“Yeah, they do.  Saturdays you see more people out with kids.  Sundays is senior citizens.  That’s the day they get out to go to church and do their shopping.  They really get out on Sundays.  Last week I missed three lights because I was loading them up and there were so many of them.  I’ve started to lower the chair lift for them now if there’s a lot of them, let’em ride up three at a time.  They appreciate it.”

“Free ride.  Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah they enjoy it.  And you can’t get impatient with them; they’re old and they’re doing their best.  I just hope someday when I’m that old I’ve got someone out there to be nice to me that way.  I gotta hand it to’em.  I gotta help’em out.  You gotta treat people like you want to be treated.”

“You’re right.  It’ll come back to you either way, and you’ll really know it when the negative stuff comes back to you.  It’s sometimes hard to tell when people are treating you nice because you never notice ‘nice,’ but it’s easy to see when it’s bad stuff coming back your way.  But I gotta say, some of those old folk are pretty tough.  They don’t play nice either.  On my usual line, the 38, you get some old ladies who will break your leg if you get in their way.  Elbows, shopping bags… it’s a contact sport riding the bus with them.”

“Tell me about it!  I was driving the 30 [Stockton line, out of deepest Chinatown] and this old lady got on with a cane and wanted a seat, but there was a disabled lady in it, younger.  The old lady was yelling at her to get up and the other lady was saying, “I have a right to sit here, I’m disabled,” and next thing you know I hear a *bap* and a yell and you know what she did?  That old lady picked up her cane and whacked the other lady right in the eye!”

“No way.”

“Way!  And those canes they use now, they’re aluminum, like softball bats.  She caught her right in the eye!  She was crying and the blood was coming down; I didn’t see it happen but everyone was saying what it was so I called the cops.  The old lady was already halfway down the steps making her getaway before I even knew what was going on.  The cops came right away and caught her a block down the street.”

“With her cane I guess she couldn’t get away so quick.  But that’s a good shot, right in the eye with a cane on a crowded bus.  She must have been in training!”

“Yeah, ninjitsu with a cane!  She’s a walking weapon!  But a lot of them are.  Those old birds are tough.”

Our conversation meandered to the importance of public transit in these times of prohibitive fuel prices, and then we pulled up in front of the TransBay Terminal, where Greyhound busses head in and out of town.  A very tense breathless man with a big rollerbag had asked when boarding, shortly after I had, where the terminal was; the driver announced it for him in a clear strong voice.  With thanks, the traveller deboarded, with a small, silent, and very pretty young woman, barely more than a girl, whom I’d barely noticed had even boarded with him.  “Tell’em Paco Paisano sent you!,” the driver called to the departing dogriders. 

I filed the information, with an asterisk.  Paco Paisano, my fun busdriver.  Something clunked in the undercarriage of my mind.  This was a name I’d heard before. 

“Remember Paco Paisano?” Dammit, he was calling me on it.  Time to admit my ignorance.

“It sounds familiar, but I don’t remember....”

“The Flintstones!  When Fred was a race car driver, that was his name!  ‘Now racing, Paco Paisano!’”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” I had been mistaken - I had no idea what he was talking about.  My Flintstone familiarity was sorely lacking.  If only they’d included it on the LSAT… but it did seem more like at GMAT thing. “Man, I have not seen that show in forever.  It used to be serious television, right?  It was prime time network stuff.  And everybody would have to sit down to watch it when it came on or they’d miss it.  No DVRs, no VCRs… I don’t even think they had syndication.  There were three networks and this was what they gave us.”

“Yeah, and now it’s all cable companies and you gotta pay to see anything.  What a rip off.”

“I’ll say this, though - you pay but you get a lot more than they used to show us.  There’s dozens of channels, and you can watch what you want when you want it.  And there’s enough competition that you’ve even got some better stuff than the Flintstones sometimes.”

“Well I don’t know about that.  Paco Paisano was pretty cool.” We were turning the corner at Main, now, pulling up to the final stop.  My office was a block away and I’d be there plenty early.  We said goodbye to each other, and I wished him a good Friday and Saturday.  The ride had gone quickly, and not just because of light traffic.  Paco Paisano had piloted me to work, and, you know, he’s a champeen racecar driver.  Or maybe it was just Ralph Kramden from the Honeymooners.  Busdrivers can really get you where you need to be sometimes, even when it’s not exactly where you’re going. 

(upon further research, the flintstone racer was named “goggles paisano.” not like that would have elicited a clearer recollection for me.  but my busdriver was much more of a paco than a goggles.  it’s not an ethnic thing - he just had a vibe, and it was a paco vibe, not a goggles vibe.  maybe you had to be there.  lucky for me, I was.)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

photos

there are some new ones on the photo page.  That’s all I’ve got to say about that at the moment. 

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Obligatory Creativity: The Poem of Drought and Slaking

I do feel a bit, oh, obliged now to be creative now that I got that funky recognition thing with the chick surfing in the evening gown, and if that is not inspiration for artistic genius than I guess I don’t know what inspiration means.  Which I probably don’t, except in a purely technical sense, as the opposite of expiration - a component of respiration; or alternatively, it is 1/100th of genius, in combination with plentiful warm soggy perspiration.  Let’s remember that Edison did not invent the incandescent bulb - he hired a bunch of immigrants to test filaments in asbestos-riddled subterranean dungeons in New Jersey till they made him a millionaire.  Inspiration was the only part of the project that Thomas Alva brought to the equation.  Thomas Alva Edison: perspiration out-sourcer.  I seem to have gotten off track. 

What I was getting at originally was the recognition that this blog, though recognized for its alleged artistic merit, has been distinctly not artistic lately.  I blame you, of course.  I’m just as sensitive and creative as ever, but you’re giving me squat to work with, cybernet.  Where’s the passion? The profundity?  The pinking shears that leave fanciful serrations on the hemlines of my soul?  Where, I ask you, is the poetry? 

Oh, there it is, just below.  In the absence of any help from you, TYVM, I’ve been self-stimulating, creativity-wise, by jotting my typically inane illegibilities into my beloved “Dr Manhattan” memopad for a few weeks now, and though much of my artsiness has been taken up with stuff that either is not ready to be divulged here yet or that never will be (I do have a life outside this blog you know) I did scrawl a few words a few weeks ago that never really left my mind once I got them on the page.  I just kept on repeating those few words over and again to myself, knowing that something was supposed to come after them but not knowing what it was.  And in fact, I still don’t.  That did not, however, stop me from forcing the issue by writing those words at the top of a fresh page of my official “writing” notebook and staring at them for a week or so as if a poem would self-generate on the remainder of the sheet beneath them. 

My poems take two forms: free and, I suppose, “fettered.” The words with which I started seemed fairly fettered to me, a rhyming couplet with parallel syllabic stresses.  But I was having trouble getting more than just those two lines going.  Like, sometimes I’ll be standing in the shower and I’ll just suddenly think of three-quarters of a decent sonnet.  Not this time.  I wasn’t even coming up with a general subject - just those two lines, arising occasionally from my subconscious, reminding me that I’m not getting any younger or more creative.  Or, while in the shower, any cleaner. 

Well, enough of that borax.  Lack of creative spark is no longer an acceptable excuse for failure to produce.  If I don’t spontaneously generate my generation’s response to Paradise Lost while shaving my head of a bleary morning, then I will settle for forced extrusion of vaguely-rhyming phrases with certain similarities in scantion.  The internet does not have time for inspiration to strike me.  It hardly has time for me to strike myself, though god knows I try.  Not very hard, but at least I’m consistent. 

SO: having giving up on patiently awaiting artistic enlivenment, I embraced hurried hacksterism.  I sat riding to work on my new boring bus and forced a poem out of the original couplet that had been mouldering on my creative plate.  And since I have no shame in such matters, I hereby share it with you.  I am not professing it to be good, but it is finished.  There is something to be said for closure, is there not?  And if so, who am I not to say it? - Thusly:

THE POEM OF DROUGHT AND SLAKING

I rinse out my mouth
with a bucket of drougth
and direct my attention in general south

where the soil is arid,
the skeletons, buried,
and the dissonances, unfamiliar and varied

my soul is enblistered
emotional twistered
my eyes find my shoes and my thoughts are sequestered

vertigo surging
the fundament lurching
but something left broken inside me is merging

I stand up and savor
ineffable flavor
though parched and confused I resolve not to waver

each step brings things nearer
my vision grows clearer
and the unspoken voice finds the ultimate hearer

despite that I’m reeling
the damage is healing
I fear that it’s time to experience feeling

See?  That’s all it takes to be a poet-by-compulsion.  And in fact I’ve got some cool photos and an essay about a shirt and a story about a wall, all stocked up in the rusty outbuildings of this Chucklehut.  Ooh lookit me I’m authoring!  It’s enough to make real authors think of something else to call what they do.  But until I get that cease-and-desist letter I will call this a poem.  I might even do so afterwards.  This punk feels lucky!

Monday, July 14, 2008

Daniel’s Spicy Charm - a note from the winner’s circle

Hello there Ubernet, and thanks for stopping by.  Or - did you?

You know, I flatter myself to imagine that NOBODY READS THIS SITE. I have site-metering which disabuses me of this, in part - I can see that a few people do click through on a daily basis, though most of them seem to be looking for random weirdness of the sort I approximate but do not actually achieve (I do have my weirdness but the area of intersection with that of my searchers’ is usually fairly minimal). I also have a handful of actual readers, whom I thank and amply compensate with mailings of pixie stix and expired pharmaceuticals. But mostly, I figger, this place is as quiet and private a corner of cyberspace as an airplane bathroom is to the rest of the airplane. But, just as all airplane bathrooms are equipped with closed-circuit televisions (to entertain the cockpit crew), this blog is in fact somewhat less than totally private. In fact, people do sometimes stop by to consume my inky words even though I neither pay them to do so nor received a formal “request for permission” from them. The temerity of some people. Can you believe?

Well so it happens, I got an email from one of these “web surfers” - a wise and funny woman named, oh, let’s call her Lynne, whose site, GirlyShoes, is remarkable for its uncompromising attitude, profound social consciousness (and not in the boring way) and rigorous attention to grammar. Lynne and I even met in person once, down in South Florida where even the fish sweat, so she should know better than to believe the crap I launch from this-here site, but what the hell, she went and won herself an award and passed it along to me: the Arte y Pico, which I am advised is untranslatable so I Americanize it as the “Spicy Charm” award!

The idea of this award is to recognize blogs of unusual merit, and I qualify as “unusual” at least so I’m going to take the Arte and run, as they say. Lynne tagged me and four others as less worthless than some other blogs she’s accidentally read, and I’m still glowing from the compliment.  But recipients of this prize are obliged to pass it forward five-fold, so now it’s my turn to turn you on to the blogs I consider “prize-worthy.” None of these good people know I’m gunning for them. (That’s how I get away with this crap.) However, I recommend, regardless of awards of merit or otherwise, that you check out these blogs if you get a chance. They’re all good and each in its way goes far to advance the apparent ethic of Arte y Pico: to reward creativity, design, interesting material, and contributions to the blogger community, regardless of language. Sounds pretty impressive, till you realize that I got one of these suckers. However, in an undoubtedly-successful effort to return Arte y Pico to the prestige to which it is entitled, I hereby nominate AND award the following bloggers:

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

Anne at Ample Sanity: who makes surfing the web an art form in itself, and whose commentary on interior life significantly enhances my own.
Teresa at Blue Coyote Laughing: whose photos-with-toy-cameras each deliver more value and meaning than any millions of megapixels I might wish to generate.
SJ at I Asshole: who never stops saying important things even when she’s making me squirt coffee out my nose, and who still has time to make her own liqueur, baked goods, and living chickens.
Chantel at Life and Times of Chantel: whose photos and words deliver me into a world where significance emerges from every experience.
Brandon at The Pen Is Mightier: whose… um… really, I can’t even tell you about this guy.  His photos are supersaturated and amazing and his way with words is like a great chef’s way with knives. 

Now, since I remain a lawyer at heart, I hereby post the rules for Arte y Pico:
* Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone (yes, you too).
* Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.
* Each award bestower must post the rules for the awarding of this, um, award.
* Award-winners and -bestowers have to show the link for the Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
* Free cocktails for all prize-bestowers, to be sent along by all readers and recipients.  (This was my own rule.  Send all cocktails to me via my email address.)

Thanks, Lynne; this was fun.  I appreciate the appreciation, and winning inspires me.  In fact, I’m so inspired right now that I think I’ll take a nap.  Man, victory is sweet!  And so is nap-time!  To the victor goes the snooze button!

A Recap So Substantial it’s a Re-HAT

I come before you this Monday with a craw full of weekend still seeping through the semi-permeable membrane that is my mind.  From Friday night through Sunday I kept myself occupied and productive.  How do I feel about this now?  Distinctly divided.  I wish I’d gotten more done but I’m glad to see the progress that’s been made.  I didn’t get out to enjoy myself nearly enough, except that my forays into social intercourse were in fact delightful and fulfilling.  I didn’t achieve nirvana - AGAIN (nor even stone temple pilotdom) - but I did accomplish some decent shopping.  But ultimately my experiences - for better and worse - rank this weekend not just in the “positive” column but the “meaningfully memorable” column.  It’s not even a column, actually.  This distinction is so unusual that it’s usually an asterisk’d footnote.  But let’s take things in their proper order so you can stop asking yourself what the hell I’m talking about and why you’re still reading this.  If in fact you are.  Which I’m not.  Let’s go on.  (In the extended entry below, I mean.  Go on, click through.  Whassa matta, you chicken?)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Trade-Off Joe’s

I’ve been putting something off.  Knowing that this issue was slowing gnawing its way into the pantry of my soul, still I avoided it.  I wrote poems that I couldn’t finish, and stories I shouldn’t have started, and essays that didn’t need to exist, and scads of silliness that served only as palliatives to the increasing pangs in my heart.  But last night yet another final straw shattered the spine of yet another metaphorical camel, and I can delude myself no longer.  This is a matter that has moved from being an unformed rumination relegated shamefully to the bottom drawer of my consciousness, to a clear and present concern.  I cannot deny the truth that has foisted itself upon me, and having so recognized the truth, I am obliged - as a man of sterling personal conviction and vigorous rectitude - to address it, publicly and with verbosity.  And so:

Trader Joe’s is running on empty, and it breaks my foolish heart. 

I’ve used this site too often in the past to instill in myself a sense of cosmopolitan superiority - that my little life in my small realm is objectively fabulous, rightly an object of worldwide jealousy.  If you didn’t wish you were me, it was just because you didn’t know how great it is to be me.  And even I needed reminding every so often, so I would get all verbal about the small wonders that cushion the sharp corners of the cheap flat-pack coffeetable that is my life.  If I felt down, or out, or any of the other negatively-valued prepositions, I’d generate a litany of glorious wonders cobbled together from the wispy tailings of my quotidian experiences, and after a few thousand words I’d be pretty sure that I was cooler than the average bear, or at least, more persuasive about my own coolness.  Anyway I’d persuade myself and that was enough to get me off the dime.  And often enough, in that rambling shopping list of “things in my life that are worth mentioning to the rest of the world in my craven attempt to convince it that I was alsome” was something relating to Trader Joe’s - shopping there, the cooking of food obtained there, an experience I’d had related to that food or those stores - anything, really.  TJs has been a staple of my storytelling, my self-view, and my life for many years.  And there is good reason for that.

When I was a lad, TJs was a small chain - a few dozen stores at most, all in the GLAMA (greater Los Angeles Metro area).  They had started in South Pasadena, I think, and my local Sherman Oaks outlet was still an apple fallen close to the original tree.  We’d go to the local supermarket for most of our staples, but when it came time to get wine or cheese or crackers or anything for a party, we’d go to TJ’s and stock up.  I never really understood why we didn’t do more of our shopping there - it was a great little store with, it seemed, everything we needed, packaged up with a good ‘tude and some available-nowhere-else specials.  One that I particularly remember was some special beef jerky they carried back in the early ‘80s, a product that was soft and chewy like a sausage and needed refrigeration.  I’ve never seen anything like it since, and I didn’t even see that item for very long - Barry and I ate the whole container while in the checkout line and spent the next half hour lying on the floor of his van questioning our judgment.  But my point was, TJs had the goods.  Special cookies, big chocolate, funky (in the good way) cheeses, cheap port and wine and beer… that was a store that really seemed to have it all. 

After I got back to LA after college I was delighted to see that TJs had expanded from the San Fernando/Gabriel valleys to the LA basin, where I could shop in Culver City or Fairfax with the same easy gourmandizing as that to which I’d grown accustomed in my salad days (yes they also had really good pre-made salads).  The “fearless flyer” advertising their wares for the month was always entertaining reading and had some great must-buy items along with funny little cartoons.  They had the best selections of nuts, dried fruit, pasta sauces, grains, pastas, crackers, and so many other items.  It was a cornucopia and I committed myself to it wholeheartedly.  Though we did our usual “full” grocery shopping elsewhere (TJ’s paper products and detergents were not quite up to my household standards or were too expensive), I felt proprietary about Trader Joe’s.  It was not a grocery chain - it was my grocery chain. 

Thus it was that when we moved to SF, the lack of TJ access was among the primary things I missed about my old hometown.  But that didn’t last too long, as we soon enough discovered one shy TJ outpost way up north in San Rafael.  I have very warm memories of driving across the bridge to return to that comforting fold to get my weetabix and cojack cheese and fresh breads and such.  We also noticed, when we were shopping there, that we were often in the presence of others who seemed not to have been to a TJ’s before.  I remember so clearly one woman dragging her SO through the aisles as he wrestled with a shopping cart, muttering like one possessed, “there must be chocolate, where do they keep it?” We laughed at them, almost envying their anticipated delight when they realized the chocolate was just above the frozen food in multifarous variety.  What a fun store it was.  We were relieved to have it back, and delighted to share it with others. 

As time passed the chain grew.  The San Rafael store was joined by one in Daly City - much closer to us, and there was no bridge toll.  Then one opened in SOMA SF.  Then one opened right in our neighborhood - a really big TJ’s, their 100th outlet (as signage inside proudly proclaimed).  This was in about 1995.  We were riding high.

I just checked wikipedia and the chain is now up to 300 stores.  They’ve expanded 200% in about 10 years, and I am no longer riding quite as high on the TJ experience as I was back in the Clinton era.  The stores are easier to find; there are many all over California and in many other states as well.  My favorite familiar shopping experience awaits me nationwide, from Woodland Hills to Union Square (NY).  Low-priced wine, beer, cheese, candy, frozen fish, prepared meals, and miscellaneous chazzerai are available to the masses.  But not the way they used to be, and that’s what’s got me griping today.

Lately, we’ve been having trouble getting the goods at Trader Joe’s.  The great white bread they used to carry?  Gone.  The mini-bagels?  Gone.  The selections of dried fruit, canned veggies, cheeses, wines, everything - it’s evaporating.  Their frozen dinners are significantly depleted.  The frozen fish selection has been whittled down to a fraction of what it was before.  The great canned smoked trout is no more to be found.  I realize that they buy in bulk and make special deals and never themselves know what they’ll be able to put on the shelves from one week to the next, but a lot of what they buy seems to have been made for them, so I only credit their excuse so far and no farther. 

Finally, we come to last night: Kel went for our weekly shopping trip and came home with the rice I’d asked her to buy, but reported that all they had was white rice (which I don’t care for) or what she got - brown rice with toasted barley and radish seeds.  And that’s better than last week, when the only rice for sale was white basmati.  Can I ask you - what the hell?  Since when is regular brown rice so hard to find?  It’s at the big groceries; why not at this 300-store chain?  They placate me with bins of low-cost cookies and bags of cheap salad greens, but every week we spend more there and the variety is less.  Plus, what they have, they don’t have consistently.  They sell out, discontinue, restock, change manufacturers more rapidly than ever.  It’s getting difficult to know what to put on the shopping list because I have no idea what they actually carry anymore.  The store is frequently re-organized, and we’re wondering if it’s to keep us from figuring out what they’ve stopped stocking.

So this is my lament: I miss my old Trader Joe’s.  It was harder to find but it had more food, at better prices, with a staff that seemed to be dedicated to the mission like Grateful Dead roadies were to getting the band on stage.  Their shoppers were a brotherhood and their products were a commercial sacrament, the sharing of which bound the community of their patrons as wine and crackers are known to do elsewhere, though without the extra bonus of eternal life, for which instead was substituted the gloating gratification of stuffed sacks of gourmetage.  But now my local TJs has lost the cachet.  Shoppers are no longer bound to each other fraternally; rather, they’re forced into opposition - struggling for parking (it’s a terrible parking lot there, but it’s beside the point) and then wrestling past each other down crowded aisles, searching for products that are frequently no longer on the shelves, and racing each other for that last sixpack of Fat Weasel beer or cornmeal crust sausage pizza.  What was once a place to which I clove as a sanctuary of comestibles, has degraded into - dare I say it - a grocery store. 

We still shop there but the magic is significantly faded.  Not that it’s gone entirely - when I have occasion to hit the local major-chain supermarket, the lack of soul there is so overwhelming that I want to put my head under the auto-mister in the produce display just to awaken my senses a little.  I understand that grocery stores are having as hard a time as any of us these days; profit margins are razor thin and prices keep rising as products become scarcer.  But I don’t care.  Trader Joe’s has undergone a mutation akin to gigantism, burgeoning so excessively in such a short time that the spirit of that once-profound establishment has been tragically dissipated.  I’ll keep shopping there, of course - it’s better than the corporate alternative.  But I don’t think I’ll be bragging about it anymore, any more than I’d expect to win your admiration by divulging that I get my coffee at Starbucks or my smoothies at Jamba Juice.  I don’t actually do either of those things, but it’s a fair analogy.  What was once a rare and precious commodity now verges on the generic.  I guess I’ll need to find a new way to impress you all, and a new way to revive my consumeristic soul.  Good thing I’ve got Clement Street essentially at my doorstep.  That is still an extraordinary shopping experience, and I really don’t think they’ll be able to export it to the midwest. 

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Tickets Now Available

Recommended follow-up shows to the current “Woman Impressionists” exhibit at the local fine arts museum:

* Female Impersonators
* Lady Ventriloquists

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Reunions, Celebrations, and New Frontiers

Let’s do a little catch-up, shall we, so we can move forward without leaving anyone behind.  And I do NOT intend to turn this blog around if anyone gets stuck at the rest stop.  I’m not joking.

Last weekend was distinguished by two very important parties, one on Saturday (a big 20th-ish un-reunion for Penn grads from the ‘80s, like myself and about 15 of my closest friends) and one on Sunday (an extended family get-together with some really good family folk).  Then at the last minute the Sunday event was rescheduled to conflict with the Saturday event.  In a tizzy, I stuck with the event that had not rescheduled, on the theory that those who make my life difficult shouldn’t get to see as much of me.  Turns out to have been a good choice - that was no ordinary 20th-ish un-reunion.  To start, most of the people there were actually my closest friends - people I’ve cared about since I was an undergrad.  Many of the others are people I now wish I’d known at that time, but I’ve been making up for missed opportunities in the past few years.  Our hosts rented a huge gas grill for grilling cheesesteaks (with imported-from-philly steak meat and special rolls for el sabor authentico) and set it up on the back deck, handy to the full top-shelf bar in the backyard.  Big piles of tastycakes treats were distributed within easy munching reach, and I brought a case of choco-tacos just to make sure.  I ate and drank and laughed and reminisced, and even had a chance to wear my Penn parade marshal hat (no you cannot see me in it).  All in all, an absolutely exceptional day of al fresco cheesesteakery and affiliated hedonism.  Yay.

The next day we drove out to see those of our relatives whom it was still within our ability to visit - cousin Billy and his brood, plus his parents (my aunt and uncle, visiting from the gulfwang state).  We love them all and see far too little of them; it was a shame that we missed so many others who’d been partying at the family compound up in sonoma the day before but that is how the (aunt bunny’s famous frozen chocolate chip) cookie crumbles.  Once again, a very good day.

The next day, Z started “big boy” preschool (as opposed to the semi-academic day care where he’s been getting his grooming lo these few years now).  We’d prepared years in advance to get him into the right placement and we made damn sure he was ready and excited for it, and it’s all going even better than we’d hoped it might.  It’s a great facility, we really like the staff, and he’s coming home energized and excited.  I’ll get back to you later about my challenges getting from the drop-off to my office - it shouldn’t be as difficult as I’ve been making it.  The important part is, Zach is a full-on schoolboy now, and it’s working out superbly. 

Skipping a few rather pedestrian days, we did in fact experience a 4th of July, in a casual sort of way.  We wound up deciding at the last minute, more or less, to visit some colleagues of Kel’s at their home in a very small west Marin town for a burger-n-dogs cook-out.  First, though, we attended the big local west Marin parade, and by “big (...) parade,” I mean it was pretty itty-bitty when you get right down to it.  I’ve got some photos in the extended entry if you care to check them out, but it was hilariously small-scale and upliftingly authentic.  This was truly a community that had come out to have a good time, and there was no one laying down any value judgments or attitude.  Okay the two old strung-out looking hippies with long beards and filthy torn-up jeans, stumbling down the road with a Palestinian Rights banner, did get a slightly mixed response - but no one bothered getting out of their deck chairs to argue with them about anything.  Mostly everybody just grinned and drank their “lemonade.” The biggest response I saw - this is the truth - was when two kind of sketchy-looking skateboarders came rolling up the parade route, looking all delinquent and counter-cultural, and one of them got some good speed going and jumped his skateboard over a big pile of horse turds.  That got people excited, I tell ya.  Nothing like watching someone risking dookie-foot to get the crowd’s attention.  The party afterwards was a lot of fun too, even though I barely knew anyone there - they were all very nice people and they’d gone to the trouble of getting a keg of one of my favorite beers as well.  They also had excellent burgers and dogs, plus a (pet) chicken.  Overall impression: highly patriotic, and a damn fine time as well.  Thanks, Kel’s colleagues!

That day was hot and clear in west Marin, but it never really cleared up back home in our part of the City.  By 8 o’clock that night we were seriously debating whether or not to go forward with fireworks watching at the waterfront.  Last year July 4 had been a cold but sufficiently clear night, and we’d staked out a perfect spot for watching stuff get hurled into the sky to be exploded.  Of course we wound up walking away just as everything was really getting good and airborne and explodeded, because our two-year-old was not ready for prime time if you get my drift.  He was freaking out, frankly, and there’s no reason why giant flaming balls of airborne chemicals that blow up loudly should be a negative experience for a young lad.  We got away before he crapped himself with fear (since he was riding on my shoulders at the time, one might say that discretion was the better part of hygiene).  But that was last year, and now it’s, um, this year.  Our two year old is now three and he was ready for the big show - he insisted on it, in fact, as we got close enough to the viewing site that we realized the cloud cover was heavy and low enough to prevent anyone from seeing anything in the sky.  Regardless, Zach urged us to follow through, and so we did.  It was a lovely night for a walk by the waterfront, anyway, and we got back our key pyrotechnics-viewing spot again, and Z was staunch in putting up with the loud scary booming sounds as well as the screaming and popping from unauthorized “personal” explosives going off randomly here and there.  He stuck by us and - though he occasionally covered his ears - he watched the sky just like he was supposed to.  And what did we see?  BUPKES.  Every so often the towering cloudbank hovering about 30 feet over our heads would light up green or red or blue, or bits of flaming sparkle would fall from it.  We saw almost nothing, but it felt good to be outside and near all the action.  There’s something about percussive mortar fire that just makes it feel like summertime, ya know? 

Saturday the fifth was taken up with housework and shopping for some important new items, like a car seat and a double stroller.  We got produce.  We played at the playground.  I took a run in the park.  We laundered.  That’s right, it was a low-key, high-value day.  We needed one.  We also, late that night, got to watch Hot Fuzz, a British comedy of the new “British humor can actually be pretty funny” school.  Good times, followed by good sleep. 

Sunday was the climax of our weekend - we took the boy into space for the first time.  Sort of like going into outer space, but really just an artist’s rendering - we visited the empty spaciousness of the Sundance Kabuki Theaters for the early showing of Wall-E, Z’s very first big-screen movie.  He did really well, too - spent the first third of the film in his own seat, and then the next third in moms, and then the last in mine, which was fun.  Pixar has created another serviceable feature, not great cinema but truly great animation, and it was a blast to watch it with Zach.  Plus, I got to feed him raisinettes, which is good for the soul.  Mine, anyway.  Extra plus: After the movie, we were already conveniently placed at the Fillmore Street Fair, with the funnel cakes and the jazz-rock combos and the attractive individuals wandering the streets and the RIDES FOR CHILDREN!  Yes, we kicked down for the tickets and I rode teacups with Zach.  Can I tell you?  BARFACIOUS.  I may never look at a teacup again without giving thanks to the supernal powers that be that I need not ride around inside of it.  But Z loved it and that’s what counts.  Afterwards, I mostly had to stare at a motionless spot on the sidewalk while Z cavorted in a bouncy castle, just so I could re-boot my peristalsis.  The rest of Sunday was full of more housework, including some significant furniture and paraphernalia breakdown and reorganization - the big desk is now a tiny return, and the study is filling up with clothes and toys that will belong to Jesse when he gets here.  That seems to be an event that is getting closer by the day.  It’s a good thing I’ve had such a bunch of fun ahead of time, so that we can show him how it’s done once he arrives.  After all, turning a handful of days off into an actual weekend is not as easy as it might appear.  I’m still in training, myself, but I’ve made excellent progress lately.  Don’t you think?

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Ready for Big Al

I’m posting unaudited mindpurge today.  This is stuff you need to know, so badly that adverbs fail me.  However, I have not subjected any of it to the honing process of my incisive editing.  May god have mercy on your soul.

Let me be frank and embarass myself, seeing as no one is stepping up to take the bait and do the dirty work him- (or her-)self: Yeah, I have seen several episodes of American Gladiator, and I don’t just mean the last-millenium version.  I actually TiVo their overstuffed, painfully distended broadcasts, and watch them on purpose - sometimes even with other people in the room.  It’s entertainment at its mindless best, and that’s what I need sometimes.  Loud noises, bright lights, and fake-looking people beating the plasma out of typically normal-looking masochists using hilariously overengineered equipment.  They have lots of events involving being suspended in mid-air or tumbling from a height into a pool of water.  They pass no judgments on me for watching, and I return the favor by skipping most of the filler and recaps, which reduces the broadcast time by half or better.  This gives me a sense of being efficient in my wasting of time, which is a great combination.  But that’s not the real big draw. 

Plus, there’s Hellga, who was actually yanked by one contestant off her platform during a tug-of-war, causing her to plummet into the water and get all wet and angry-looking.  But that’s not the real draw either. 

There was also the deaf contestant who dislocated his shoulder in the middle of the final obstacle-course-type race, and then popped it back in on national television when he needed his upper body strength for another element of the event.  That was pretty cool, but it still is not the real draw for me. 

For me, it’s not about Phoenix (though she is indisputably hot) or Steel (see comment re: Phoenix) or Venom (see comments re: Phoenix and Steel).  It’s about Big Al.  He’s the referee for the events, and he attacks the role like his children and livestock depend on it.  It’s not just that he’s deadly serious - you get that way when you’re a big (or smaller) league baseball umpire, or even when you play one on the teevee. 

The thing I really love about Big Al is his action.  Whatever is going on in the competition, he’s created a hand signal for it based on all other officiating signals from the other major sports (baseball, basketball, football, polo, jai alai, dogracing, internet poker).  When he asks you if you’re ready to compete, he’ll give you a nice big “Johnny C. Roll” and if you were not ready before he lays that on ya, you’re sure as hell ready afterwards.  He’s human, yet robotic.  He’s cuddly, yet authoritarian.  He’s the voice of reason in a world gone mad.  He’s consistently entertaining.  He’s why I watch. 

Oh hell I’ll admit it, I watch because of Phoenix and Hellga.  But when they’re off-stage the ref is pretty entertaining too.  Are the contenders ready?  You bet they are.  For what, I don’t even care anymore.  Just throw me that Johnny C Roll and you know we’ll all be ready to go the distance.  You’d never let them hurt us, would you, Al? 

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

THE QUADRILUVIALITY OF CRISSY FIELD LAGOON

I’ve mentioned Crissy Field here a few times before; permit me to enhance your mental picture if I may.  Yes, I’m going to elucidate - right here on the internet, in front of everybody.  I have, indeed, no shame. 

Crissy Field is 100 acres or so of landfill just inside the Golden Gate, a high-profile slice of the shoreline of the Presidio of San Francisco. (Trivia: it was named after an army officer named Dana Crissy.  In military terms, that is a “double-girly” name.  I am not clear where I am going with this but I considered it noteworthy.) It stretches two miles or so, from the parking lots opposite the Palace of Fine Arts, westward to Ft Point.  For quite a while, it was also a working airfield.  The old grassy meadow at its center is still ringed with old hangars and warehouses, now converted to maintenance sheds, studios, and workspaces, with a few frankly left derelict and “environmental” - in that they evoke the untidy “environment” and heavyhanded treatment the region received at the army’s hands. 

CF hasn’t seen an airplance since 1974.  It was left by the army as a blasted hull of nature, a toxic swamp abutting acres of poorly maintained blacktop.  It was dead. 

I am pleased, therefore, to report that the fort is now a park, and CF has been entirely resuscitated.  It’s now a thriving biosphere and a peaceful setting and a true reclaimation success story.  The whole area is worth visiting but I’m really focused for today on the lagoon.  The old toxic swamp got drained, dredged, cleaned, rebalanced, replanted, and left alone.  Turns out we’ve been mistaken about it - neither toxic nor swamplike, the now 20-acre lagoon is a tidal pond of of varying depths, forming islands and inlets and then consuming them twice daily as water flows in and out.  An inlet steram about fifteen feet wide runs from the lagoon, under a small ped bridge, and across the beach out to the ocean.  Occasionally this inlet runs dry and landlocks the lagoon, but mostly there’s some flow one way or the other.  The tide rises and water rolls up the inlet into the lagoon, inexorably filling it.  When the ocean tide drops the flow begins to shift; water stops running up the inlet and starts returning to the sea and the graceful lake begins to drain.  Meantime, herons and egrets fish in the shallows; from the bridge you can easily see the sandy floor of the lake riddled with thousands of little craters made by burrowing clams.  The lagoon teems with life and it pulses like a heart. 

At the outer part of the inlet, if you follow me, a streambed channels the tidal flow across the beach to the ocean itself.  Sometimes it’s a trickle; sometimes it’s twenty feet wide and three feet deep.  It’s not what I’d call a “wild” watercourse, but it is part of a working wetland.  It’s usually shallow and tame enough that little kids can play in it, and on a freakishly hot afternoon not too long ago we took Zach out to do just that.  Anyway, he was my excuse, but I’m glad I had one because it was a great day at the beach.  In particular, over the couse of half an hour or so I got to experience four very different aspects of the water, each of them a pleasure in its own right, and all of them together representing a range of senasation I still find startling.  So of course I’ll share it all with you:

THE QUADRILUVIALITY OF CRISSY FIELD LAGOON

Inlet mouth, inner edge: Crystal clear and riffled with cheerful spangles in the bright afternoon, a delicious contrast to the sun baking my back and a counter to the slightly singed feeling lingering on the bottom of my feet from walking across the hot sand.  The water does not reach even to my ankles, coursing fast over black-streaked sand.  It is chilly enough to get my attention but remains an amusingly innocuous sensation.  Before me lies a flat expanse of shiny shallow water.  I can’t see where it drops off at the center of the channel but I know it’s not too far out there. 

Inlet mouth, midstream or a little better: The water flowing past my knees is a living thing, celestial azure on its reflective face but a deep wise protoplasmic hue at my feet where the inflow is the purest, fresh ocean water filling the huge pool beyond, rich with life yet cheerlessly chilly and sucking out my breath from the backs of my knees.  It doesn’t get any deeper but what there is of it here is a true vein of some coldblooded oceanic organism.  I feel it moving around me, pseudosentient.  Even shrunken and tamed as it is here, it commands respect.  Before me are the tumbled concrete blocks that shore up the deeper western side of the channel; water insinuates steadily amid them, its mostly-glassy surface periodically disrupted by the lips of tiny wavelets skittering inland, falling infinetesimally up into the lagoon. 

Center of the inlet - halfway across, halfway back: Zach and I stand together and his small hand in mine is the focus of my attention.  The water, cool and soothing, caresses my lower calves; my feet dig comfortably into the sandy bed.  The water is spread fairly widely and uniformly across the full width of the streambed, wending its way back into the lagoon.  The sandy bank to the left carves sharply down to the water, echoing the angle of the massive blocks of scrap concrete that constitute the right bank.  The flow is steady and smooth; the water is calm and already slightly warmed - cool, but not cold anymore.  Zach is giggling.  So am I.  Before me is a wide stretch of quietly streaming water, and then the pedestrian bridge that separates me from the maze of cut-offs and oxbows now swelling up into the serene fullness of the lagoon in full flush.  I can’t see the watercourse’s reach any further than the low sweeping cement arch in front of me, but I can feel its pull.  Zach is grinning unrestrainedly up at me.  The water flows with nurturance. 

Up on the beach, down in a hole: A few young girls have dug some pits, deep enough to reach the water table so that each pit captures a puddle of sand-seeped tidewater, broad enough to let two or three small people soak their butts at the same time.  The water in the pits is three to six inches deep, cut off from the ocean, limpid and jewel-like.  The light beeze does not ruffle their subterranean surface.  The sun blazes off them with electrum brightness. The water feels warmer than the air temp - the dark sand is absorbing sunlight and warrms the pools very efficiently, tiny hot tubs filled with feral tidewater, filtered clean yet still vibrant and vital.  I can only fit one foot at a time in them as I stand watching Z playing a few feet from the inland rush of the bore up the inlet.  I now wish I’d had the presence of mind to dig a big old pit for myself and just taken a leisurely dip in it.  Those sunbaked soaking pools were some damn fine water.  And this I tell you, as one who may be prone occasionally to excessive attention to such matters.