Monday, September 29, 2008

Head’s Up: New Year New-osity from an Old-School Newbie

(update: photos from the hike are posted under “photos.” There are plenty of them so use the monthly archive to see them all.  Collect them!  Trade them with your friends!)

This is the good life my friends… I’m sitting on the couch, my feet are up on the padded hassock, I’m in my throwback Warriors t-shirt, I’ve got a belly full of apple treats and now I get to blog from the top of, shall we say, my “lap.” Feels millenial, peoples.  Feels like a new day is upon me, and I don’t just mean Tuesday sneaking round the corner waiting to give me a wedgie when I’m looking at my shoe.  I mean it’s a new year, jewish-wise, and that’s a climactic time in the ol’ hebraic calendar.  It’s a time to take stock, to make amends, to renew appreciation and to reconnect with traditions that seem to have some beneficial effect on me.  Let’s take a moment and review what’s so new about this particular little slice of the time pie, such that I have something to think about during services:

* HIKE through the forest last saturday with Kel and little whatzizname, who fell asleep approximately .5 miles into the four mile Bear Valley Trail that runs from the HQ of Pt Reyes (a park comprising a mere 71 thousand acres with 150 miles of trails) out to Arch Rock.  The photos are pretty great and I’ll post them later but for now I can report that it is highly salubrious to take a vigorous hike through the dense verdure of the forests, along the slim trickle of a crystal creek that bounces back the green of the canopy above it, the air full of pine tar and laurel spice and oak dust; sound muffled by redwood boughs and spanish moss and the meandering of the stream itself.  There was one short section in the sun, at a meadow where we lunched; the lilies there burst through the loam with irrational exuberance and their petals actually shimmered in the sunlight.  Then back again into the forest, and along the broad path till the valley grew broader and higher and eventually the trail just ended at a jutting fist of a cliff thrust abruptly out into the pacific, 100 feet tall, surf pummeling its foot so far below me that I could only smell it.  From shaded to glaring, from forest perfume to salt and fresh wind; from a view of gentle obscurantism to 270 degree horizons… it was breathtaking to arrive at the destination, but the whole trip was worth every step.  Of which there were several, believe you me. 

* SUPPER at a local restaurant for Kel’s birthday.  We haven’t had a parents’ night out since my birthday, back in april.  This time we really cut loose at Aziza, yet another of the good things about our neighborhood.  Let me divulge a smidgen: we started with cocktails and mixed appetizers, which don’t sound that amazing as I read my notes but were incredibly fresh and flavorful.  The greens on the mixed plate were purselaine - an archaic veggie that was shockingly delish.  And I don’t mean to suggest that the cocktails were anything but extraordinary.  Kelly really enjoyed her vodka with rhubarb, fennel, vanilla and black pepper, but I think my gin with lavender and orange-blossom honey was even better.  Main dishes were chicken breasts with sicilian couscous (much like israeli couscous but substituting vendetta for compulsory military service), a baked (and sugar-sweet) cioppolini onion, and slivered dates; Kel got lamb chops with figs and fried chard, and we shared a big bowl of ginger glazed veggies that were perfectly cooked.  (With the meal Kel got a glass of brico blina barbera ‘05 and I had a bottle of Saison Dupont belgian farm ale.) Dessert was the typical: fresh-baked hazelnut madelines, cinnamon ice cream and goat cheese sorbet, with some kind of chopped fruity product (mango?  sharlaine melon?  I stopped asking) - everything tasted great, especially together, and especially especially with the big glass of Obsello absinthe we shared.  We were home by 8:45 to relieve the babysitters, my two lovely nieces - WHO REFUSED HALF THE MONEY WE OFFERED THEM.  Two teen-aged girls for two and a half hours, and they wouldn’t take two twenties?  THAT is a good way to end the kind of evening that sharpens one’s appreciation for the good things in life.

* NEW MUSEUM: with that great “new museum” smell.  We walked all the way to the new Academy of Sciences building, three blocks down and two over, sauntered in with a printout of the receipt my mom sent us when she got us a membership (thanks mom!) in no time flat, and spent three hours gaping at dino bones, jellyfish, a four-story living rain forest (with birds and butterflies, but no pesky flesh-eating centipedes), and innumerable other coolnesses.  We can go anytime now.  It is an incredible resource, right here in our zip code.  New things burgeon, and I am the burgee, with responsibility for appreciating them - not just for their newness alone, though that is one good thing to appreciate about things that are new. 

* NEW PROGRAMMING: Survivor and Amazing Race are both back on the air.  Shut up.  This is good for me.  Even as the cycle of programming repeats itself, it has moved forward with a new menagerie of freaks and jerks and disasters-waiting-to-happen.  I learn something from every season of Survivor about how to handle myself in a crisis - or not.  And Amazing Race is just shamefully addictive.  The cycles and circuits of the networks replicate those of the heavens upon which they are loosely based.  I’m looking forward to 26 or so hours of sitting on my butt in front of the tube.  It’s comforting, just as is the eternal repetition of the seasons.  I count that in the “plus” column.

* NEW MAGAZINE: I got Kel a subscription to Cooks Illustrated.  I was hoping for a Rachael Ray pictorial but I didn’t even get Paula Deen - it’s the Consumer Reports of food: they take a recipe and tweak it every possible way till it’s at it’s best.  They review premium bacons and have a guide to buying and using mushrooms.  Pictures are clinical and simple, designed to help you get more out of the kitchen.  They don’t try to save you money but often do; they don’t try to make things easier - just better.  It’s a fun rag and we’ve got a year’s worth coming our way.  It promises to help us find more value and benefit in what we do all the time anyway - cooking and eating.  Kel’s already got some recipes picked out for trials.  And a year that starts with new recipes and better techniques, is a year that starts out on the right track.

On a related note, for Rosh Hashona on Monday night I baked an excellent apple cake (mix four yolks with sugar, then flour; fold in beaten whites and layer with thin slices of apple) and we had it after a supper of baked chicken (not perfect, though that’s not the recipe’s fault) and brussels sprouts a la juif, which made up for any perfection deficit suffered by any other part of the meal. 

* NEW UNDERWEAR: a major restocking.  Details on demand, with SASE and reciprocation.  Generous only need apply.  But it’s a truism that, with a new pair of boxers under your slacks, every old thing seems new again - and that goes double for the new year. 

Services resume tomorrow morning so I’d best get some rest.  I’ll get to some more essay-like stuff real soon, and I’ll post those pix from the hike too.  Meantime, shana tovah to each and every one of you, and let’s take our cue from the way things have been going for me lately and appreciate some newness.  It doesn’t last forever, you know, so you’d best enjoy while you have the chance.

Friday, September 26, 2008

not depressed, just busy

I’ve wanted for days just to slam a little essay up here about an old train car.  It’s all written up with a photo and everything.  Bastardsuckers won’t give a man a break and I expect today’ll be no different, going into tonight.  Today’s remedial expenses day - repairs to the washing machine and a new clutch for the old soob.  I expect it’ll be ugly but I am expecting ugliness more and more these days.  In a desperate attempt to derail the ugly express I’m going to have a grown-up supper tonight at a very nice place in my ‘hood; mom is invited but Zach is not.  And yes, I’ll have the debate on TiVo so I can hop right back into the ugly as soon as the mojito-and-harissa buzz wears off.  Tomorrow: Pt Reyes estuary hike.  Sunday: Academy of Sciences opening weekend.  Blog post: not sure when it’ll happen.  SO:

In lieu of the essay I wanted to share, here’s a bit of the chucklehut realpolitik: About a year ago I was in a long security line in an airport, behind a very establishment-looking white guy, late middle age, business casual with nice matching carryons.  He was clearly on his way to a business meeting and we wound up in conversation.  Turns out he sold computer equipment that helped federal banks track the flow of money around the country, and we started talking about the economy a bit.  We agreed that things were bad and getting worse.  I went so far as to suggest that if things weren’t cleaned up soon we might be facing a depression.  He laughed at this, assuring me that a depression was impossible, that the system was too redundant to allow that kind of hole to get punched in the bottom of the money bucket.  The overall tone made me think that he thought I was a fool, or at best, hilariously underinformed. 

Come this morning and it turns out that a run on my bank has resulted in the largest federal bank seizure in history, on the heels of several others enormous seizures that are leaving our economy looking like an epileptic in a strobelite factory.  While a private buyer was found for my bank overnight, the next bank that succumbs to atrophy might not be so lucky.  Money is starting to be worth its actual value, and there is less and less of it when you cut out the people whose personal wealth significantly relied on leveraged derivatives (or “levrivatives,” a term I urge you all to use as if it was in steady rotation in the Financial Times).  The depression is not upon us, but I can smell it on the weather wind.  It may be that fed intervention will help us avoid longer breadlines and dustbowl-type dislocations of population.  However, if I was to run into that bank computer sales guy in line at the airport again, I bet he’d be a little less amused by my nightmare scenario.  The line from paranoia to realism is sometimes drawn by historical realities, of the sort through which I seem to be living today. 

Get beautiful, people.  Chuckles needs inspiration.  And a little more blogging time. 

Monday, September 22, 2008

Weekend Warp-Up: The TwoFer

This is, indeed, a “warp-up” of the weekend (I just tried spelling that without a hyphen and didn’t like the imagery of a bellicose dogbaby, so there you have it, hypenated and don’t you give me any guff) because we’ll be traveling at the speed of BLOG from Weekend A (13-14) to Weekend B (20-21)!  Strap on your tinfoil helmet, this one’s going to spin your virtual head! 

Two weekends ago we engaged in the following delights:

* TRIP TO INNER OUTER RICHMOND: Kelly was at work all day on Saturday so Z and I got down and partied like to guys loose on the town: We visited the Irish Bakery and then hit the playground.  The bakery was as satisfying as ever - we got two blueberry scones and a snowball, which in this case (stop giggling) is a bready muffin cut in half and then re-glued with raspberry filling, coated in frosting and then rolled in coconut.  Actually, the scones were better and we were on a pretty serious butter rush as we headed off to our next errand, the produce market.  I really like my local produce market and this time I’ve decided to show you why:

All this was purchased with $26 and change, including: three or four zukes, about five carrots, a parsnip, a jicama, two red peppers, three asian pears, a big basket of strawberries, a bundle of scallions, two yellow onions, a can of coconut milk, two 17.5-oz. cans of coconut water (which I am loving these days), a really good mango, a big sack of mushrooms, three nice yellow plantains, six nice even yellower bananas, a bottle of water (zach was thirsty), and an enormous red cabbage, the enormity whereof I can establish by reference to the above photograph which is entirely to scale and clearly demonstrates that the cabbage is significantly larger than my three-and-a-HALF-year-old son’s HEAD.  Moral: Yay Richmond Produce. 

* TASTY DESSERT: That night I finally slapped together the Mango and Sticky Rice dessert I’ve been loving for years from the little Thai place up the street.  The really great thing about this dessert is how it’s very tasty, but a close second is how I was able to mess it up and substitute in other ingredients a LOT and still got a very delicious after-dinner starch-and-sugar bomb.  Instead of soaking the glutinous rice for 12 hours, I did 3 hours and 45 minutes.  Instead of using palm sugar (which just sounds dirty to me, what can I say) I used granulamated white sugar.  Instead of tapioca starch I used corm starch.  And, craziest of all, instead of using cheesecloth and a bamboo steamer in a wok to cook the rice, I used cheesecloth on a lattice of dessert forks in a stainless steel vegetable steamer.  AND IT STILL TASTED PRETTY DARN GOOD.  It “serves six,” per the optimistic prediction in the cookbook.  It *actually* serves two, over the course of about three hours of steady munching.  Having a really good mango also helps.  As to which, let’s say it again: Yay Richmond Produce!

* HAROLD AND KUMAR: I enjoyed H&K Go To White Castle so I was eagerly waiting for more than a month for the opportunity to view their second opus, Escape from Guantanamo, with my lovely wife.  We were prepared for jokes about all aspects of biology, perversion, and substance abuse.  What I did not expect was to find it all so entirely unfunny.  In the first movie, it was hilarious.  This time, I just kept on remembering other movies that were funnier, like “Airplane!” and “Go!” and “H&KGTWK.” We watched it silently for 20 minutes, agreed to give it 10 minutes more, and then turned it off at the half hour mark.  Upshot: we tied up one-third of our Netflix queue for six weeks for nothing.  Thus endeth a triumphant saturday night. 

* TRIP TO EXPLORATORIUM: this happened on sunday morning, and enabled Zach to play with sit-upon gyroscopes, the parabolic whisper-sender, lots of buttons and pulleys, a fair number of small metal balls THAT BOUNCE, columns of air, and tiny pieces of dry ice that somehow recapitulate cloud formation by spinning around in delicate spirals of cloudy mist.  We spent many hours of gape-faced delight in the shadowey precincts of the museum and might have seen half of what was there - and that doesn’t even include the tactile dome, which is still too much for Z’s tender sensabilities.  Also, the outer grounds of the Exploratorium are being rehabilitated - the big dome is under scaffolding but the lake has been re-shored and looks fantastic.  It was a gorgeous day and we all enjoyed the living crap out of it.  And that, my friends, is a term of art. 

Now let’s hop into the TIME ACCELLERATOR and hop forward several days.  On THURSDAY I met with an old friend and helped him record a promo for a book his publishing house is distributing; we finished the evening with several beers at an old steinhaus in the financial district.  Mark drank Spaten from a giant glass boot and I made friends with the looming, glowering Prussian hardass who was running the house (or “haus").  FRIDAY I learned of a potential opportunity to do some writing for cash money, so we’ll see if that pans out but by my telling you about it hereandnow I pretty much guarantee myself disappointment.  Verily I embrace the unknown, even as I expect it to make fun of me.  Along which lines, we were also advised on FRIDAY that we’d better come up with a thousand dollars because we need a new clutch in the subaru and no kidding seriously.  It is good that those magic monkeys keep on crapping hundred dollar bills in our front yard.  It is bad that we need to feed them thousand dollar bills to make it happen but sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for your money-pooping monkeys. 

Which of course brings us to SATURDAY.  This was a day, once again, on which Kel had to work, so I relaxed in the morning by cleaning, doing laundry, and exercising the boy at the local playground again.  This time we skipped the Irish Bakery in favor of the HOUSE OF BAGELS, where I got an excellent sprinkle cookie but Z showed me up by selecting an exceptional black-and-white, oh man it was good.  Yes I had to help him finish it.  Because I said so. 

Then we returned home to RECONFIGURE REALITY.  With Z safely in the nurturing hold of animated television programming, I disconnected the information processing center in our study and moved everything to our bedroom.  The little desk, the rolling cabinet of important documents, the little halogen light; the printer and the speakers and the whole goddamn computer all came into what has been now for years a room that has been free of such equipment.  When we first moved to the apartment we had two housemates, officially (though one never really lived there) - so everything we owned was in our bedroom, on clumsy metal shelves and stacked-up milk crates.  For more than a decade we’ve been free of that clutter in our bedroom but that era ended on Saturday.  What once was our “study” is now Jesse’s room.  What once was our “bedroom” is now our multi-purpose space.  (I’ll let you figure that one out on your own time.) I’m just saying, it was a big job and now that it’s over I can say three things: 1) we are more ready for Jesse to come home than ever; 2) the computer stuff looks a LOT better in our bedroom this time than it did when we first moved in, and 3) our computer is unusually noisy.  It sort of hoovers up with a sudden loud fan noise at unexpected junctures all through the night.  We’ve got to turn it off when we go to bed, in a final gesture now each day that yes, our life is different - and it’s about to get a whole lot differenter. 

APPLEWALK: Saturday evening we spent a few relaxing hours visiting friends in the East Bay, and took a late-evening stroll among the shady lanes and hidden stairways that lattice their neighborhood, plucking ripe juicy apples off of trees and marveling at their honey sweetness.  The ride home was easy and fun, and I slept like a log on opiates.  Good ones. 

SUNDAY: Not much happened on Sunday, unless you count taking a drive up to Tomales for a picnic with the Holt families (we all adopted from Korea) at Heart’s Desire beach, which is a pretty little stretch of sand on the edge of a long narrow bay that juts in from the Pacific like a stab wound into the flank of west Marin county.  (In fact, Tomales Bay is formed by the San Andreas Fault where it comes out of California and runs into the Pacific Ocean, but it only makes you nervous when you think of it, so we didn’t.) We ate well (Kel’s chocolate-chip banana bread was particularly popular) and even got to take a friends’ kayak out to the next beach over, to see the reconstructed Miwok bark houses ("rMbh’s").  Oh don’t play coy with me you know exactly what I’m talking about.  But just to prove it to you:

Us, heading into the water.

Was Zach enjoying the boatly goodness?  YOU BE THE JUDGE:

Into the breach:

Onto my breeches, in that I was not wearing a bathing suit and my heavy cotton shorts were by now thick and juicy with ocean water that was pooling at my most personal juncture:

Those photos were taken by a skilled otherdad with a good eye for action.  The remaining photos were taken by me via cellphone and make up for their lack of resolution with their lack of dramatic content:

From inside a rMbh, watching our friends pulling onto the beach in their kayak:

A study of the rMbh phenomenon:

A view of the neighboring beach, whereat the rMbh’s are found:

Good stuff, maynard.  But I have yet a few more images to help clarify this experience for you.  As you know, the ocean is a place of pounding waves and dangerous depths.  And here I am, ultraDad, risking the precious life of my son and, to a certain extent, wife, by lashing them to a craft of untested seaworthiness and loosing them upon the trident-lashed whitecaps.  I, mock Posiedon?  Let me clarify for you just how dangerous this seafaring adventure really was.  Here is a photo of the crashing surf at Heart’s Desire beach:

And, for scale, a child in the surf:

You saw how big this child is with reference to the cabbage, above.  So now you can see, the cabbage must be, like, four stories tall, because this kid is towering over the obviously dangerously heavy surf.  Luckily, he slept like a champ on the way home (the Narcolepsy Pro-Am Doze-Off champ) and ignored his supper and fell asleep after I left his room, which is a huge step forward for us.  I finished the second Flashman book later that night, and wrapped up a lingering sudoku.  Your congratulations are appreciated. 

Now it’s monday.  Your warpup (down, cujo!) is now concluded.  Replace your tin hat on the spindle by the exit and have a healthy lunch.  You can’t go on all week eating that junk.  You know what I’m talking about. 

Friday, September 19, 2008

In Commemoration, with Two Sugars

The fell anniversary has come and gone but I grant myself the latitude and grace to make this a catch-up post. 

Anniversaries recall to our ears the lingering resonance of events that habituation has trained us no longer to notice.  And thus it was with the towers and our continuing outrage, authentic at its core regardless of having been cynically co-opted by those in a position to do so.  The real impact of the events of that day fell well below the interests of those who chose our path of response; its weight came down squarely upon people so low as to be my brethren.  It was in their faces that the attacks of September 11 most obstinately persisted for me on a daily basis.  And now, this 9/11 of aught-eight, seven years on from the day of reckoning, they have taken down the union memorial pamphlet.  I am now responsible for remembering them on my own. 

There’s a bulletin board in each of the coffee rooms my organization maintains on each floor that it occupies in our building.  On these boards are pinned seniority charts, job listings, and other random employment-related items.  This includes union materials.  The union is a big national with many members who worked in the twin towers on 9/11/01.  More than sixty of them did not make it out of the wreckage alive.  In commemoration of the good each of them had wrought before being senselessly snuffed out, the union created an obituary booklet of photos and bios.  This booklet was distributed to all the locals, where rank and file members and everybody else were all galvanized by grief and outrage.  The shock of the viper’s strike consumed us with a a desire to do something - anything - in response.  And to symbolize that resolve, we pinned that booklet to our bulletin boards. 

The individuals who comprised the hero’s gallery that was this book, took my attention for some time.  If I happened to reach the coffee decanter too late to pour myself a full cup of joe, I’d refill the basket with fresh grounds and then, instead of scurrying back to my cube to be productive for an extra 45 seconds, I’d stay there in the coffee room and learn something about my fallen union brothers and sisters.  The immigrant.  The national reservist.  The dedicated mom.  There was a panoply of us, regular people, good people, martyered to the triumph of the American way that each of them posthumously embodied. 

And I got to know them - their hopes, their lives, their dreams.  The ones at the front of the book, anyway. The first dozen or so.  By the time I got that far into the booklet, though, my coffee would be ready and I’d go back to my cube, properly outraged, respectfully saddened.  We lost good people.  We’d get those bastards.  Eventually.  But first, I was going to have some coffee.  Revenge may best be served cold, but a hot cup of coffee accompanies it very nicely. 

As time went on I had more and more misgivings about what had happened the day of the attacks, and how we’d responded to it.  I endorsed a bombing of Kabul, and then was mortified when it was carried out.  When we turned our attention to Iraq I had to disown my government.  And yet those booklets remained, pinned up in every coffee room like butterflies on exhibition to remind me of what stil lay at the bottom of it all - a dismemberment of our common corporate being, no less galling for having been repaid many times over with the blood of foreign innocents.  We’d somehow contrived to declare war in their names, against an incohate foe and for increasinglhy attenuated reasons.  I became an opponent of war, even as I strove to remember those in whose name it was allegedly being waged.  They were not forgotten.  Of course not.  We had a pamphlet in the coffee room with their photos in it. 

Then came more years.  A war became a different war. A mission became a justification.  We got new coffeemakers, and still the pamphlet hung on the bulletin board but it began to fade and pucker from humidity and age.  I stopped reading the bios.  I stopped looking at the collage of faces on the front cover.  Even more years passed and I stopped noticing that the pamphlet was even up there.  September 11 would roll up each year like a howitzer and roll away like a storm surge, leaving me feeling gunshy, drowned and dirty every time.  I began to have trouble connecting my conflicted emotions to the cheerful faces that endured on the glossy little pages of that booklet.  The seniority chart hadn’t been updated for 18 months.  The union memorial booklet barely registered anymore. 

What I noticed, finally, was blank space.  The bulletin board was cleaner.  Some old ads were gone, and some outdated circulars had been updated.  And my sixty-odd transcontinental colleagues who had perished in fire and smoke had perished again, but quietly this time, with nary a wisp of fog from the hot-water spigot to mark their passing.  Someone had taken down the booklets, unceremoniously, as a housekeeping task like clearing out the coffee grounds or replacing the herbal tea supply.  I took a moment to contemplate the patterns in the corkboard, a simple flat panel from a distance but impossibly complex when examined up close, dark brown spots and swirls in a light brown matrix.  Then I filled my coffee cup and took it back to my desk.  I would try to remember.  It was September 11, for God’s sake.  Of all days, I could remember this one, and through it I could remember those strangers in the book.  Then, of course, I took my coffee back to my desk.  Comemoration is all well and good, I supposed, but those people worked for a living.  I chose to honor their memory by doing the same. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Bobo!  Attack!

In lieu of an actual post, which will likely be sprawling and not quickly accomplished, here’s a disquieting vision of the things that impact me and how I respond to them.  It’s powerful material and I hope you can still look at me the same way afterwards.  Like with your eyeballs and stuff. 

Kelly was telling me about a conversation she overheard at work involving a man who employed a service monkey.  Said service monkey had somehow acquired the habit of biting young children.  The person responsible for the ensuing primate mayhem was reported to have shouted at one point: “Don’t antagonize my monkey!”

First, I was struck by the marketing potential of this slogan.  It belongs on t-shirts, trucker caps, wallets on chains, and large shiny beltbuckles.  I can also see a line of writing journals.  “Don’t Antagonize My Monkey"-wear is the new black.  And I watch Project Runway so don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.  No, you’re out. 

Second, I was uplifted in spirit to hear that somewhere someone had make it possible to bring together monkeys who bite children, and people unable to bite children for themselves.  Go for it, kid-biting monkey!  There’s no mountain we can’t climb - together!  Especially Bitten Child Mountain!  Excelsior!

Okay, enough from me.  For extended readerly enjoyment I recommend this article by George Saunders in the New Yorker.  I know they’re media elites but sometimes they sneak something in for the rest of us.

A weekend recap of sorts is forthcoming.  Maybe fifth.  Don’t push me, it’s a busy week. 

Monday, September 15, 2008

Osaka, After Seven Weeks

There’s a lot of other stuff to catch you up on but the short version is everything’s fine and no news from Korea yet.  Meanwhile, I’ve got the third of three music-related posts for your ignorement.  This time it’s not a vignette I experienced on the bus, it’s a poem based on a story I am pretty sure is true in its most basic essentials but I am making up all the details because I am sly like that.  Enjoy your monday poem.  I am busy now. 

The gig was in Osaka
After seven weeks on tour
1968 it was
America was number 1
I’d been woodshedding all my life
but when I got the call from Ray
I knew for sure I’d hit the jackpot
Everybody loved his sound
Barrelhouse and boogaloo
He wanted me to blow my sax
while somebody from way back when
stayed stateside for to sober up
Mr C knew how to party
but he took great pains to tell me
up on stage the expection was
Perfection - nothing less
Let me know a couple times
I needed to clean up my act
Ray would stumble up to me
some evenings after clubs were closed
to tell me I’d been off the beat
I laughed at him all blind and mumbly
Guess I knew what he was saying
Seven weeks into the tour
We were playing in Osaka
We were making decent money
I was spending it on whiskey
Got a couple geisha ladies
Had myself a little party
just before the second show
Took the stage without my necktie
Figured Ray would never know it
When I answered at the roll call
he could tell something was funky
I could see it how he paused
and cocked his head when I said “here”
Smile chilled me like an ice cube
sweating through a highball glass
Anyhow we started in
on all the songs that I’d played twice
a night for seven weeks already
I’ll admit I was a little
shakey on a couple solos
never fully lost the beat
but once or twice I near misplaced it
I recall that I was anxious
sweating through my smoking jacket
fingers slipping on the pads
I had some trouble with my breathing
Came on up to “What You Say”
That’s a song I used to love
Those Japanese were getting down
Seven weeks into the tour
I had gotten tired of it
but that night the spirit moved me
I recalled how good it was
to let the music be in charge
to give myself away to it
Suddenly I realized
my solo was three bars behind me
Ray was vamping, rocking, frowning,
So I jumped on in too fast
fingers slick and reed bone dry
It didn’t sound quite like I wanted
Stumbled through as best I could
Felt like I had blown a lung out
Stole a peek at Mr C
swaying there at his piano
He had something on his mind
The song went on but then it ended
Japanese folk clapped politely
Ray stood up to take a bow
which was unusual mid-set
so I suspected bad news coming
Ray asked me to stand up with him
Take a bow, he told me grimly
So I dipped my face to floor
as Ray told them to give it up
for my last night on stage with him
In fact, that was my final song
I rose erect, eyes locked on him
Don’t try to stare a blind man down
He clapped me firmly on the back
and told me, get your horn and go
Just let me wrap the set, I pleaded
didn’t care that I was begging
Ray was cutting like a bandsaw
I’ll pay for your ticket home
but I have had enough of you
I don’ t care how much you drink
but I will get your best from you
if you intend to share my stage
Are you gonna need an escort
so I bowed again and left
took a flight back to the states
but at home I felt uneasy
like I’d left a part of me
up on stage back in Osaka
Gigged around some here and there
wound up drinking more than playing
I suppose Ray got that right
and ever since I left Japan
I keep on hearing “What You Say”
my mind repeats it all night long
and I don’t ever mess it up
I’d like to play it one more time
so Ray could hear the song like I do
now he’s dead but I have faith
that I will also die someday
and meet Ray Charles once again
to show him what I’ve really got

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The Piper (Unpied)

Coming home that Friday night, I had a predisposition towards things musical.  I’d started the day receiving an unexpected trove of something that was indubitably music, followed by a long listening session while I worked, not to mention the day-long anticipation of the arrival of houseguests that night from whom I’d come to learn of many new musical horizons.  All in all, I was primed for what happened, but even so it caught me entirely by surprise.

I stood by my bus stop - a slender refuge amid four lanes of one way traffic threading thickly past the massive feet of the office blocks that towered overhead.  The falling light of early evening poured down Bush Street, glowing off the stately edifices.  It stands to reason that I was wearing my iPod, that I was letting it fill the interstices of my mind with revivifying music, but then how did I come to speak to that man and his wife?  Perhaps it was during a break between songs on my playlist, a much-precedented sticking of my nose into other people’s business, but somehow we did find ourselves in conversation at the bus stop.  She in jeans and a T, he in a longsleeved button-up traveler’s shirt and a slightly ponderous pair of cargo shorts.  Both, as I recall, wore hats and carried canvas knapsacks.  They were from San Diego, they told me.  We discussed transit developments in major California cities in a breezy, offhand way; when the man opined that the 38 wouldn’t get them out to the Cliff House and old ruined baths, I gently disabused him.  Decent enough folks for tourists, I warranted.  They were free to share my bus with me so far as I was concerned.

As we all headed out they were sitting together up front with slightly clenched primness, hands draped over knees and eyes alert and vigilant - at least, at first.  But they wound up surrendering their seats to some elderly locals and eventually they separated, the woman in jeans sitting somewhere else and the cargo shorts guy sitting on the inward-facing bench across from mine.  We shared a brief recognizant nod, and I went back to my notebook and headphones.  I was writing something very important and listening to something I probably really liked.  He was fumbling with his tourist paraphernalia.  I had better things with which to concern myself. 

A quick glance: he was untwisting an earphone cord.  Back to my notebook and my playlist.  Then, another glance: he has plugged the cord into a small grey box - clunky for an MP3 player, could it be GPS?  How excruciatingly tourist.  I didn’t expect such gaucherie but there you go.  Back to my notebook again. 

And then a few moments later, a third glance up: he’s assembled a short tube from segments of black brushed steel; up and down its ten-inch or so length are darker spots - holes?  pads?  He’s now screwing it into the base of that dull grey box, about the size of a cellphone.  With a flick of his eyes he catches me watching him, and responds with a disarmingly lopsided smile before returning to his work. 

My notebook lies forgotten on my lap.  I’m watching the tourist building something.  The little grey box reads, “Radio Shack / Micro-Pipes.” That isn’t helpful.  Or, actually, now it is.  He’s put the earphone in his ear, and he’s holding the tube out in front of him with the fingertips of both hands as if it were a musical instrument, some sort that only he could hear.  Maybe a recorder, or an oboe, or some exotic asp-charming woodwind of which I’ve never heard.

Whatever was programmed into that device, that’s what he was playing, his eyes fluttering closed with concentration, or perhaps with distraction, as a song I could not hear bore him away from where he sat, in his hat and cargo shorts, before me on a bench in my bus in body only.  His lady friend may have been going to the Cliff House but he was on his own trip, and I felt like the tourist as I watched his fingers own the landscape of the tiny silent instrument over which, steepled, they danced. 

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

earshot

I just posted this to fieldreport.com, too.  Can’t spread it too thin, am I right people?

It being a Friday morning, I take the 38 bus to work.  Since lately I’m usually riding the Presidio shuttle, it’s often a bracing invigorant to board that behemoth on Geary Boulevard and see what happens on board as I head downtown.  This particular day I find a seat where I like to sit, get out my notebook, pop in my earbuds, and start in on a bit of writing.  I’m wearing my nice blue jeans, a snappy shirt, and a little straw fedora; with my shades and my iPod I am well-cocooned and ready to indulge in some literary pretensions.  The music rises up in my ears and I let it shrug its way down my back, up my fingertips, out my toenails.  It’s loud music with an undulating beat.  Unconsciously I sway along with it as I start to write.

The bus is getting crowded.  At Fillmore a striking young couple enters.  She’s tall, solidly built but very elegant looking, dressed in khakis and a white business shirt that looks great against her dark skin.  With her is a tall, well-built young man in a wifebeater and jeans.  He wears stylish sunglasses and a white bandana around his head; a small moustache and goatee give his face ambiguous character.  He looks smart and tough.  And he and his girlfriend are hanging on the bar over my head, glancing coolly around.  I notice that he has gothic letters tattooed up the inside of his meaty upper arms; white ‘pod cords curl down from his ears to his beltline.  I glance up, as is my wont; he glances down and we exchange a curt, infinitesimal nod.  I go back to my book and he to his windowgazing.  A few minutes later my peripatetic glance lands again on him and we reiterate the miniature nod. 

Shortly thereafter the crowd shifts and he and his girlfriend move further back on the bus.  She gets a seat and he stands beside her, by the rear exit.  As I write and keep my eyes open for what’s going on around me, I watch him nodding his head to his music much as I am nodding mine to mine at times.  I wonder sometimes, as I watch him, if he is watching me, too, with cool calculation behind those Gucci sunglasses.  It sort of feels like he is.

The bus rumbles forward to its destination.  I stay on till the last stop, but most everybody is gone well before that.  The girlfriend with the white shirt has left the bus; I didn’t notice where.  Her boyfriend is still riding, getting off at a Market Street stop.  We’re almost alone on the bus.  As the bus comes to a halt and the doors accordion apart, he does not leave by the open exit next to him.  Instead, with calm purposeful strides he comes up the aisle.  As he walks past me, a hand flashes out, holding a square of orange plastic.  A CD case.  My hand rises and I palm the disk; my eyes inquire of my benefactor, whence the magnanimity.  He has not stopped moving, his parting glance is another little nod, but this one with the trace of a smile on his broad clenched jaws.  We share an appreciation for music, so he’s sharing the music itself.

So many times I’ve wanted to ask someone on the bus what he’s listening to, what she’s singing with her eyes closed, music echoing in her ears alone.  I’ve always wondered about the songs I couldn’t hear but that were moving my neighbors to the dregs of their euphonious souls. I never actually did ask any of them of course.  That would be invasive, uncomfortable; it would have demanded some exertion on my part.  But now someone way too cool for me ever to have inquired as to his choice of music, was dropping tunes right on me.  I tried to stay in character as I realized what he’d done, but I’m pretty sure my answer to his streetwise goodbye nod was a big broad smile full of grateful happy teeth. 

Once I get to work I load in his disk, reading over the photocopied insert that identified the tracks.  Twenty-four cuts, with names like “International Rock Stars” and “blackbradpitt” and “R8ted Gorgeous.” Several of the songs are identified mostly by number - “My Song 2,” “My Song 7.” It takes a long time to load but eventually I get the familiar media player screen and the music begins. I want to immerse myself in it, to participate to the utmost in the musical reality that this stranger has chosen to share with me, so I pull out my earbuds and pipe the beat directly into my brains.  Let’s see what the bus has brought me, music-wise.

It’s hip-hop, rough, crude, raw.  It is home-made - much of the back tracking sounds as if it were recorded from a tape player, or off a television.  The NFL theme, commercial jingles, all kinds of idiosyncratic sounds come up behind the relentless rumbling rap of the singer.  I try to listen to the whole thing, but I just can’t.  It’s not my cup of tea in the first place - hip-hop and rap play a very small part in the pantheon of my musical tastes.  Then, the execution is… underwhelming.  The lead and backup singer stumble over each other and the non-vocal tracks sound like cheap video games and cell-phone ring tones.  The lyrics, to the extent I can understand them, don’t tell me anything, and the whole thing feels repetitive and self-indulgent. 

But I don’t really care about any of that.  The thing that drives me to remove the headphones is that I can’t work while I’m listening to it.  There’s something personal and direct happening in this music, regardless of any issues I may be having with it on a technical level.  Whatever I’m hearing, it is true in a way that very little I hear really is.  It captures my concentration and I can’t think of anything else when it’s playing.  If I am going to get my work done, I can’t listen to it.  I have to shut it off. 

Since then I have not gone back to hear the last half-dozen tracks remaining.  However, I have paid much closer attention to the people on my bus who listen with particular enthusiasm to the music in their headphones, and I’ve wondered even more than usual to what insidious beat are they snapping their fingers.  There is clearly a lot of music going on just outside my perception of it, and I don’t think that I’m supposed to like all of it - but I do intend to hear as much of it as I can.  Whether it’s my style or not, it is going to tell me something worth knowing. 

Monday, September 08, 2008

Camera Phone: images amok

This was going to be a day with no postings, and I had a very clear sense of what the next post was going to be.  Lesson learned: I don’t know squat and maybe that’s for the best.  A handful of images from a weekend run delightfully amok:

You know it’s summer in San Fran when the historic light rail is running the transit schooner - the trolley that puts the “fun” in “funicular” (assuming it can go up a steep hill and has an angled bottom edge, but you know what I mean):

Sunday, we took a little time in the morning to visit the beach and play on an honest-to-goodness seesaw.  It was a lot more fun than I’d expected it to be.  This particular piece of equipment is made out of old creosote-soaked timber - a half-buried log and a long sturdy board.  We were alone with the cool morning breeze.  Good times. 

Finally, sunday afternoon I spent a little quality drinkin’ time down in the lower haight.  This is my favorite of the various graffiti and street-art images I took with my cellphone during that trip (and yes, these are all cellphone photos so don’t go whining about the lame quality, I know they are pretty crude but so am I sometimes):

Finally finally, I got a cool note today from a “recovering educator” out in Maryland who liked one of my old essays, about sad old shops.  He found me by doing a google search on “desuitude.” Be-YEAH!  I’m in the top 20 google results for “desuitude”!  He sent along a very cool essay, that I post up for your enjoyment in the extended entry.  Also, have you gotten into FieldReport.com?  Just saying… it’s kind of addictive, but not in the bad way. 

Okay, time to get back to the… thing… that I was doing… before.... SOOKAYGOODBYETHANKSOKAY? More later in the week; those “music” posts I had in mind are still percolating.... 

Friday, September 05, 2008

Friday On My Mind, but Off My Rocker

Happy friday and good riddance to this week.  Damn but it’s been hard to bounce back, and this is coming from one who bounces for both fun and profit on the US Pro-Am Bouncing circuit.  In fact I actually did bounce for a solid 25 minutes this morning on the mini-tramp, but that was just a warm-up for this weekend, which will be dedicated to getting some goddamn sleep and watching stupid movies and Burn Notice with a cold beer and my feet up.  And with this circumscribed worldview and lack of focus in mind, let me throw down a few chewy tidbits just so you don’t think I’ve spurned you for another blog with a bigger hit-count (as if!):

1) I saw a bus pulling up to my stop this morning while still on the sidewalk in front of my house.  Saying to myself that it wasn’t worth my effort to run for it, I started running for it anyway, cutting across the greenbelt to narrow the distance.  I noticed as I reached the far sidewalk that it was a regular 38, not the Limited or Express (hm, sounds like I’m shopping for pants at stores in the mall (and for the record I do not wear 38s)), so it really wasn’t worth my effort.  I also noticed, as I returned to an easy loping pace, an unpleasant sliding sensation under my right heel.  YES!  DOG WASTE!  JAMMED UP INTO THE TREADS OF MY FAVORITE BUSINESS SKETCHERS!  I tried to pound it free by slapping the shoe against the curb, and then tried to abrade it out by grinding my shoe into sandy dirt; then I received a free cup of Peet’s coffee at the bus stop from a candidate for district supervisor and caught the BX, whereon I sat quietly, inhaling the strong dark aroma of unsweetened coffee, seeking solace in its warmth and richness.  You know what?  It smelled like dog crap.  Now I am going to have to find a way to clean out that shoe before it makes me sick as I sit here at my desk.  How about putting it in the microwave in the coffee room?  Anyone have any experience drying out shoe poo that way?  I’m afraid it may have some impact on the lingering scent of butter-flavored popcorn....

2) I’ve been avoiding political rants lately on this blog (not that I have the same discretion in my personal conversations, just ask me about Sarah Palin if you’ve got 40 minutes or so), but this one is just too juicy not to flog: I didn’t see any of the RNC convention but I understand that Johnny M, the Elephantine Presidential Candidate, presented his speech in front of a big screen on which was depicted a stately structure with a broad lawn.  Why?  Well, it’s a nice break from the “Grecian splendor” of the Donkeycratic speeches in Denver, which got them into so much trouble - but why *that* building, and what was it anyway?  Well one of my favorite blogs has revealed the solution, or at least the short answer to the second question and a damn fine idea about the first one.  The building depicted is Walter Reed Middle School in NoHo, which I would have attended had I lived three blocks east of my actual home growing up; instead I went to Robert Milliken Jr High, named after the guy who measured the atom (it was a 38 regular (which means I would not have had to run across the turdmeadows to reach it)).  Milliken was not an especially memorable place; Reed had, at least, a much nicer campus.  Nice enough to be the backdrop for the RNC convention’s main speaker?  Hmm… maybe.  Or maybe - just maybe - somebody was told to get a photo of Walter Reed MEDICAL CENTER, where this nation’s stalwart fighting forces go to recuperate after suffering casualty in the service of liberty?  Sure, that makes sense - ex-P.O.W. with permanent injuries, professing interest in reforming a D.C. establishment that has taken flack (so to speak) for, among other failures, serious deficiencies in care and facilities at WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER… So the call went out, Get me a photo of Walter Reed to look impressive behind Johnny Mac, and they found this one but they didn’t like it so they went with my rival junior high school.  This, my friends, is why we need a president who doesn’t need on-the-job training on how to use The Google (tee-em).  Visual proof is at TPM Muckraker. 

3) Here’s a little something-something that will only be funny to those of you with extensive yoga practice experience.  However, I assure those of you without such experience, this would really be funny if you knew squat about yoga (ba-dum).  I’ve seen a lot of these “office yoga” guides, the sort of thing that gets taped to the bottom of your computer monitor or pinned up in a coffee room, encouraging folk to do some basic exercises so they don’t get cramped up and rupture a disk or something while sitting at their brainiac machines for 32 hours a day.  I’m guilty as anyone (moreso than some) of failing to take breaks, not shaking out my hands or limbering up my back, letting my neck slowly turn into a column of twigs and pebbles so I can’t turn my head without repositioning my feet, preferably by placing them a pedicure bath while a bevy of professionals kneads my sorely knotted cervical musculature.  However, let’s be honest, those “roll your head/stretch your arms/flex your toes” exercises are not yoga.  Yoga is a demanding, vigorous practice that integrates body, breath and spirit.  It is sweaty, demanding, and can change your life.  Yoga is not a short or easy path, but it is a rewarding one.  Let us not demean it with comparisons to small-scale desk-chair isometrics. 

Instead, let us demean it by suggesting the following actual, full-body postures that truly do represent a form of yoga that is designed to enhance cube-farm fitness:
* Downward Faxing Dog
* Exalted Stapler
* Salutation To Whom It May Concern
* Phone Tree Posture
* Task Chair Posture
* Kabhallapotty Break
* Staff Pose
* COBRA

It is to laugh, is it not?  Is not all of it to laugh?  It is, truly.  Don’t sass me.  I’ve had a long week.  Next week: some posts about music!  Everybody enjoys that, right? 

Monday, September 01, 2008

looking back: Final Weekend in the Month that Would Not End

OH MY FREAKING GOD this month of August will NOT END.  I realize that it may look like september where you’re sitting but this is the THIRD TIME I’m trying to get this post up, as it were, and August will not “leave the building.” I’m going to try it one more time and then I’ll give the hell up and skip to October ‘09.  See you then.

It’s not that this past weekend has been bad - quite the contrary, it’s been mostly delightful.  But it’s the fourth weekend in a row that was so overstuffed and hyper-agendized that I feel like I have a Fox News Ticker (tm) running across my larynx ("up next, Dan cooks supper - but will they eat it?  Stay tuned - insomnia awaits.  Zachary: “Where’s my bear?").  Let me try to give you a rundown and see if I can’t get into the recovery phase.  I’m still in the “freaking out with all the stuff going on” phase and it’s, well, not restful. 

SO: Friday night I got back from work to find my niece Delia and her parents hanging out in our living room - thankfully, expected.  They brought a gorgeous handmade (by them) quilt for Jesse (may he soon be with us) and tasty burritos for us all from Darkest Palo Alto ("Paul the Castrati").  We munched them with enthusiasm and then most of us piled out to my uncle’s gorgeous place up on the hill, for a family-wide cocktail party.  And by “family wide,” I mean just about every person who could travel was present, including many cousins I very rarely see and a few - I suppose they’re nephews and nieces, so let’s go with that - whom I totally didn’t recognize at all.  Luckily for me the family is really very cool, especially when you get the red wine and mini-pizzas on the table, so we had an excellent time.  Zach and Kel didn’t join us, mostly because Z was too wired and fried ("friared") to handle himself in a house that full of priceless art.  Exactly what do I mean by that?  Funny question.... at one point we were hanging out by the bottom of the stairs when one of the presumed nephews started riding down them on his butt.  Lets face it, the place has an elevator, he was doing this for the sheer joy of it.  I can’t blame him.  However, we couldn’t help noticing that he bumped one of the many framed works lining the staircase as he came down, feet flying and butt bouncing.  What did he nearly knock off the wall?  A pretty well-known Wayne Thiebaud streetscape.  I have to admit, it did me a lot of good to be at a party where a rambunctious 11-year-old can actually almost trash a really nice piece of art, but where it doesn’t quite happen anyway.  Good times.

The next day we saw everybody again, with Zach too, at my niece Ellen’s bat mitzvah at the stunning old Sherith Israel synagogue.  It was a very nice service with a really cool new sidur (prayerbook), that I would actually like to sit down and read at some point.  Ellen did a great job and Zach was even brought into the action, called to serve as an “Ark Attendant” and opening the huge old sliding wooden doors at the proper moment.  His comment, upon pulling his door to the side and gazing up at the gilt ark full of resplendent torahs in their silver decorations and velvet robes: “Awesome!” And in fact I think that’s the recommended response, so he’s right on track. 

After the services we took a break from the luncheon buffet to sneak upstairs with niece Beccy and some of her friends to check out the topmost balcony near the dome.  Okay, maybe I missed the latkes but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. 

Zach ran around and around the small circular floor, and I just gaped at the view - not out, but up and down.  Really nice place they’ve got there.

(Aside: Afterwards Kel was describing something that had happened during the services that had made her a bit anxious, saying it had given her the heebie-jeebies.  “No,” she corrected herself, “not that...”, pausing to let the right word occur to her.  I suggested, “the Hebrew Jebrews?” but it turns out that wasn’t it either.)

Later in the afternoon we got ourselved into mufti and visited Chrissy Field to see the EnviroGlobes display.  It was pretty damn cool (I’ll fix these links soon, but it’s too much trouble right now) (okay that otta fix’em) -

- but the wind was sandblasting us and it was not a pleasant or comfortable experience, so we took a short drive to let the kids play in a forest

technically, this was in the forest

(they love them that forest action) and then just went back home and got some pizza.  We’ve been pizza-ing lately at Gaspare’s for the old-school style and at Orgasmica for the funky neo style, but for a change of pace we opted for Cable Car - just a block from us and always completely empty, they seem to survive on their take-out and delivery service.  They’ve tried many ways to lure in the peoples - big tvs, pool tables, outdoor seating, no outdoor seating… this time when I went to get the ‘za I was, again, the only person in the house apart from staff.  Also, the seating area was all torn up and a new arabic-type mural was painted on one wall.  As I glanced around, the cashier, who’d trotted up from the back of the kitchen, told us that it’s going to be a hookah bar.  NOW you’re talking, I thought, that’ll bring in the hipsters.  As I completed the transaction one of the staff who’d been sitting back in the kitchen area walked briskly past me out the front door.  Trailing behind him was an odor of burning herbs best experienced at concerts such as the Grateful Dead or Phish.  Hookah bar, I wondered?  Some questions earn their own pungency.

The next day we laid low for the morning (I made pancakes, which lent themselves to the lowlaying) with some playground-and-museum-concourse action in the park.  Then Kel and Z and I went out to the east bay to visit friends who’d just come back from China with a new baby who was having a first birthday party.  These are friends we don’t know as well as some of our old college chum crowd, but they’re delightful people and have an amazing house way the hell up in the Oakland hills.  (Aside: Kel walked in on me as I was getting ready to leave for the party.  “Are you wearing that hideous shirt?,” she asked without thinking.  Once she’d said it she realized what a mistake she’d made, but it was too late; I responded, “NOW, I am.") They were serving carnitas as good as any I’ve ever eaten anywhere, with damn fine tamales and a refreshing hibiscus-cooler-and-tequila beverage which I wish I had more of right now. 

I ate many times more than I needed and then we cruised back home so we could cook supper for Scott and Evi (Delia, as it turns out, does not eat).  Dessert was a bunch of apple cake I’d bought at the new local Armenian deli-grocery-bakery, which was good enough to cause me to overeat for the third time in one day.  I wound up staying up too late to try to watch Ironman for free on-line, but the site where I found it was too slow to load and I kind of felt bad to be watching a video that had chinese subtitles and in which occasionally you’d get a silhouette of someone getting up and walking out of the screening room.  I didn’t realize my sensibilities were so delicate, but such blatant bootlegging just felt distasteful. 

The next day was Monday, Laver Day, which we started with another trip to the park - but this time to the Big Playground, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all persons involved, what with the swings and the climbing walls and the play structures and the water features and the rest of it.  Then we took a little down time at home while E/D/S visited a friend; upon their return we all went back to Chrissy Field to frolic in the water, in that it was a gorgeous day with light winds and the high tide was just starting to ebb from the lagoon.  We waded and splashed and dug pits and let the warm water run between our toes, and had a great old time. 

That left us just enough time to order too much food from Ton Kiang and to eat most of it, to let the kids have one last bath together (Z was too tired to be very congenial but still eventually let Delia play with the toy sea horse), and then most everybody went to bed, stuffed and comfy.  Except for me, with my brains on “free rotate” and my sensibilities reeling from yet another weekend of too much stuff to keep it straight.  Hence my investment in this post tonight.  It’s been good to get it out of my brains, finally.  Additionally, I got to debrainify with the use of our new laptop, an unprecedented technological advance in this household, all hooked (or “hookahed") up to the new wireless network that’s now also powering TiVo.  August saw me get a nice new phone, too, and that “hideous” shirt that I really like.  It was a big month.  I will miss it, in retrospect.  In the present, I am so freaking glad it’s over. 

bonus, pending my repair of the above apparently broken links goddamnit (repair completed but bonus retained): the soft drink aisle at New May Wah market.  Drink hearty - you could use the refreshment!