Sloth And Dignity

I'm typing LOL, but I'm not laughing.

2009-08-02T21:50:49Z

There should be a way to type "LOL" to indicate that you really are laughing out loud, not just typing "LOL". It's like that thing where people use the world "literally" to mean "I'm exaggerating, but less than you'd think I am if I didn't use the word 'literally'". What's up with that?

I propose "LOLFR", as in, "laughing out loud, for realz". At least until people start typing "LOLFR" when they're not really laughing out loud.

Today, er, Two Days Ago In Music History

2009-04-26T23:13:08Z

Having taken a day or two away from my laptop, I was just catching up on my weekend's reading and came across this list. The last paragraph sent a shiver down my spine. I should have posted this on Friday:

"Today In Music History: April 24, 2009

1942 - Barbra Streisand was born.
1968 - Louis Armstrong was at No.1 in the UK with the single 'What A Wonderful World"
1968 - The Beatles new company Apple Records turned down the offer to sign a new artist named David Bowie.
1984 - Jerry Lee Lewis married wife number six, 22- year old Kerrie McCarver.
1992 - David Bowie married model Iman, in Switzerland.
1982 - Kelly Clarkson was born.

On this day in 1976, Paul and Linda McCartney spent the evening with John Lennon at his New York Dakota apartment and watched Saturday Night Live. Producer of the show Lorne Michaels made an offer on air asking The Beatles to turn up and play three songs live. Lennon and McCartney thought about taking a cab to the studio, but decided they were too tired. This was the last time Lennon and McCartney were together."

--
It's not very well known that by the mid-seventies John Lennon and Paul McCartney had renewed their friendship. There is even a 1974 studio jam consisting of McCartney, an extremely coked-up Lennon, Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson available on a bootleg entitled "A Toot And A Snore In '74". Unfortunately, despite what you might hope from the stellar line-up, it is an absolute mess of drunken, unfocused rambling, Lennon railing against whatever crosses his mind at any particular moment, and sloppy, unfinished attempts at '50s songs - not even worth the download time, unless you're truly desperate for one more recording that happens to have both Lennon and McCartney's voices in it. (See a typical review and track listings at Bootleg Zone, http://www.bootlegzone.com/album.php?name=mm9225§ion=2)

Nonetheless, having heard George Harrison and Paul Simon's beautiful acoustic renditions of "Here Comes The Sun" and "The Boxer" (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2319123) from their surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live the following year, I tend to look favorably on the idea of ex-Beatles showing up at NBC studios in the mid-'70s with guitars in hand.

So, just imagine what might have happened if Paul McCartney and John Lennon had been a little less tired that night. Just imagine what we might have been treated. Imagine how music history might have changed. If they hadn't been too tired. Just imagine.

--
Original source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/music_blog/archive/2009/04/today_in_music_37.shtml

Delinquency 2008: The State Of The Art

2008-10-22T22:10:27Z

Right now it's school hours, and there are a bunch of kids hanging around on the plaza right outside my office window. They've got a huge rolling AV rack out there with them, and they're playing Guitar Hero on it.

Man, juvenile delinquency has come a long way since I was a kid.

Question of the day: The First Time In Your Life That You Noticed Someone Cheating At Something

2008-08-27T20:27:27Z

Question of the day:

The First Time In Your Life That You Noticed Someone Cheating At Something

Actually, the first person I noticed cheating would be myself. I totally figured it out on my own before ever seeing anyone else do it. I think I got my first inkling when I tried to tell my friend Steven Axeman I was 4 1/2, not 4, because I thought it made me sound grownup. Somehow he knew I wasn't 4 1/2! So when I turned 4 1/2, I told him again, and he said, "Yes, today you are." I never found out how he knew exactly when my half-birthday was, but it was an epiphany that mysterious means existed by which I might be found out.  

But really, my first experience with real cheating would be in second grade. I hadn't finished my homework, and my teacher, Mrs. Beekman, wrote a note in my notebook for my mom to sign. So what I did, on the bus home, I forged her signature. Of course, what I failed to consider, was that I was a second-grader and unwise in the ways of the world - I wasn't aware of my own ignorance. So I figured it was fine that instead of scribbling "Ann Krubopple", my mother's name, I printed longhand, in widely spaced letters, "Mrs. Krubop" - and then I hit the edge of the page and ran out of room. But I wasn't going to let an obstacle like that stop me. I simply added a hyphen, and continued the name on the next line, so my "mom's signature" came out like this, printed:  

Mrs. Krubop-
ple

  Genius!

  The next day, my teacher called me up in front of the whole class to show her my mom's signature on the note. I turned to the page nervously - I still recall this so clearly - and showed it to her. She got very quiet, and just looked at it for a moment.

  After looking at it thoughtfully, she looked at me, and said, "Michael, is that really your mother's signature?"  

I said, "Yes."  

She looked at it again for another thoughtful moment. "Now Michael " - here she paused for emphasis - "your mother is in the next room. If I take this and show it to her, will she say it's her signature?"

  But clearly Mrs. Beekman was underestimating me. Did she think I'd conquered the running-out-of-space-on-the-first-line crisis only to be undone now by a bluff, a transparent lie? Not a chance!

  I said, "Yes."

  Once again, genius! I was at the top of my seven-year-old game.

  And Mrs. Beekman walked out of the room for a curious moment. Had I known at the time that this was the very last moment of my innocence, that immediately following it I would have the first adult experience of my life, I might have savored it. But I didn't. As it was, I just stood quietly in front of the class waiting to see what was about to happen. And a minute later, Mrs. Beekman walked back into the room with my mom.

  Mrs. Beekman held out the notebook, and theatrically said, "Mrs. Krubopple, is this your signature?"

And my mom said "no," and turned and walked back out of the room.  

Several important life lessons were learned in that single seminal moment:
 1.) Life is funny.
 2.) You're not as smart as you think you are. 
3.) The devil is in the details. 
4.) The best-laid plans of mice and men, etc.
 5.) Payback is a bitch.

  Needless to say, I got in some trouble over this incident, both with Mrs. Beekman AND at home that night. Years later, my mom, who was very active in the PTA, told me she had happened to be in the next classroom that afternoon working on a PTA project, and that she and Mrs. Beekman had shared a very good laugh in the hallway. "It was really cute, " she said.  

So, that was one more early lesson that I took to heart:  
4.) If you're going to make some sort of trouble, at least make it funny. The authorities are people, too.  

I still heed those lessons to this day, especially the last one.

The Zen Of Patrick

2008-08-07T18:40:30Z

My friend Patrick does Vipassana meditation retreats. He goes to this Buddhist center out in the foothills of the Sierras and spends 10 days meditating in silence - no talking allowed, for the whole time.

Last night he told me a story about one of his first Vipassana retreats. He said he spent a lot of time thinking about what his first words would be when the 10 days of silence ended.

On the last day of the retreat, an hour and a half before the silence was supposed to end, he was walking outside on the wooded property, when suddenly, from just beyond the treeline near him, there was a tremendous clatter and racket. Several other nearby retreat members, all also awaiting the end of the 10-day period of silence later that afternoon, looked up in curiosity, and saw that Patrick was close enough to have gotten a glimpse of what caused the noise.

As he walked away, with an hour and a half left to go, one of the others broke the vow of silence. As Patrick walked by, the man asked, "What was it?"

And Patrick told him.

As he related the story to me, he ended with, "... and, after all the time I spent thinking about what the first thing I was gonna say after ten days of silence would be, the first thing I said wound up being, 'A dog.' "

A masterpiece of doublespeak

2008-08-01T19:20:49Z

Yesterday's New York Times reported that Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, clarified earlier promises of unrestricted internet access for foreign journalists during the Beijing Olympic games with this statement: "It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet.”

An about-face on the part of China's internet censors? Not on your life. This was Weide's way of explaining that foreign journalists' surfing habits would be subject to the same censorship restrictions as everyone else in China. The Times piece goes on to say, "Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse."

Nothing new from the Chinese government - but what skill at spinning totalitarianism into a plus!

You know, I once promised my girlfriend I'd give her convenient and sufficient oral sex. She didn't appreciate it either.

A matter of definition

2008-02-17T07:58:09Z

Déjà vu: a false sense that something new has been seen before
Jamais vu: a feeling or impression that something familiar is not familiar or is being seen for the first time
Presque vu: the erroneous sense of having something on the tip of your tongue, or that a mental epiphany or breakthrough is about to occur

I wonder if the French have a word for the strange feeling that something wonderful has just happened, but you don't have any idea what?

Copyright Notice

2007-09-19T23:07:58Z

The text and original graphics, logos and slogans used in my blog "Sloth And Dignity" (as seen in the main page here) are copyright (c) 2005-2007 by Life In A Mikeycosm. Please do not steal them and use them in a gay porn video like these people did.

Song For Hume, And Wacks, And Dan, And You

2007-06-12T08:05:27Z

MP3 link included near end of entry

s some of you may have noticed, I do not generally write posts about the day-to-day events of my life except in the course of telling an amusing story or explicating some idea or other. So, we interrupt this blog for an unusually personal moment.

On May 27, Christopher Hume's parents met up with my friends Dan and Mike at Bard College, and they went down to the on-campus waterfalls on the Sawkill Creek, where Chris and I had spent so much time back in school, to scatter Chris's ashes. I was going to go but decided at the last minute not to because I was too angry at Chris's family, for reasons I won't go into here. My phone rang at about 9:30 that morning, and all I heard was a burst of static for a few seconds.

* * * * *

Later on Mike & Dan called me from the falls. After the ceremony they had gone to the beverage distributor where we had bought so many sixes of Genesee Cream Ale way back then, bought a six of Genesee Cream Ale, brought it back to the falls to drink it, and called me on a cell. The earlier burst of static had been the rushing of the water when Mike surreptitiously called me on his cell while Chris's parents emptied the ashes, so I could "be there" for it. Later on, they noticed Chris's ashes still swirling around in the creek, and they filled one of the empties with water and ashes to give to me when I head east next month.

Bard's been in a development boom for the last 15 years, and Dan & Mike reported to me on all the changes... the new student center where there used to be a field and marsh where you could hear the spring peepers sing, the new dorm complex where there used to be woods by Annandale Road, the disappearance of the Ravine Houses where most of my friends had lived at one point or another.

That afternoon a song drilled its way out of me. It's called "The Ravine Houses Are Gone". I'll have to ask you to pardon my vocals.

Link: RavineHousesTake12.mp3

I've since done a better take of this, but haven't cleaned it up enough to post yet. I'll replace this post with the better recording when it's ready.

The next day Dan posted a picture in his blog of he & Mike at the falls that afternoon. My heart broke.

Day nights

2007-06-11T01:54:12Z

I gotta do something about them day nights.

I was just walking home from the store, bopping down the street at 11 PM, a time that I grew up believing was a sensible time to be in bed. 1 AM used to be alien terrain, exotic, strange. 2 AM - well, that might as well have been a million o'clock. It was like the furthest frontier. The night might have gone on forever beyond that, for all I knew, ending only when the last human had decided to go to bed before we could all wake up in the daylight again.

Nowadays the small hours of the morning are familiar to me. More than familiar - ordinary, 1 AM no more mysterious than 1 in the afternoon (and probably not as mysterious as 10 AM, a time I haven't seen in many months but that somehow still fails to hold a fascination for me.) Even 4 AM is pedestrian. I call it the "day nights". It's just another part of the day. If you're up long enough, it becomes literally day again, and what once seemed the endless rolling mystery of night is revealed to be nothing more than the day going slack for a while, drooping into in a bucket of dark water, but soon enough pulled taut again. Sunrise doesn't just break the magic spell - it announces that it was, after all, just a spell. Daylight shines even into the darkest recesses of the day nights.

When I was a kid, I snuck out of the house a few times late at night, either by myself or with friends who had stayed over for the express purpose. I once ventured out into the unfathomable territory of 3:30 AM - alien, not as mars, perhaps, but as the arctic. It was a broad frontier. Now, it is no different than a trip to the cellar.

I had the experience once, as an adult. I had decided to catch a nightcap, last call at a nearby bar, at quarter after 1 in the morning. As I walked the few blocks to my watering hole, the neighborhood was quiet and still. Perhaps it was just that, or perhaps it was in conjunction with home psychological or chemical fluke, but suddenly, it all came flooding back. It was late night, that foreign land - past the frontier, well into the secret, wild territories of the 1 o'clock hour! Here there be tygers!

And I was on my way out! To a bar, to play with the adults in an adult outpost out in the wilds of 1:15 AM! I was delighted.

That was a rare exception. Once 4 AM became familiar to me, and sunrise mundane, the territory was charted, tame. I know the riverbed from shore to shore. 11 PM isn't the last outpost of the known, it's just 11 o'clock in the afternoon. And hence we have the day nights. There's no beacon, no hidden land or hour out there far in the night, far into times that we don't have a name for yet, which I might stay up later and later and still never find. Tygers don't exist. Dawn always comes.

So, I gotta do something about them day nights, because, you know, the quintessence of romance lies in the beckoning. Once you've conquered the unknown you have familiarity and safety and comfort, and if you believe the world is a terrible place that may be all you need. I am a romantic, because I am, at significant cost to myself at times, an optimist - a cynical, scarred, and unfailing optimist, in that I believe better things may always lay just a couple of steps into the unknown. And really, they don't have to be. I just need the potential to be there.

Note: This little bit of exposition is dedicated to Ray Bradbury, a longtime companion who I have never had the pleasure of meeting.

The Measure Of A Poet: an explication upon empirical qualification of authorial poesy in three lines

2007-05-26T22:14:49Z

What better a measure of man as a poet
Is there, b'sides seeing some poems he's wroet?
If better exists, I sure do not knoet.

Shortbus: A Fairy tale About Sex

2007-05-06T05:54:34Z

Why I posted a movie review is a mystery even to me. But if you want you can read it here:

Rating: 6/10

OK. Let's forget about sexually explicit content for a moment. You've got 400 other reviews you can read about the sex in.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: John Cameron Mitchell is a very good filmmaker. Hedwig And The Angry Inch was very well made, and Shortbus is very well made. This is why I gave this movie 6 stars - it was enjoyable to watch on the level of very well-made cinema. He's clearly done his homework - this film reeks of "best student in his film school class". Despite how that sounds, I mean it in a good way. The actors, including the 'local color' cast to play themselves, also give very good performances all around.

Some of the characters and situations in Shortbus do have a few nice subtle touches, but then, all to often, it is ruined by having them go and behave in contrived and unrealistic ways that are practically Hollywood clichés. Situations alternate between characters making themselves emotionally vulnerable and revealing deep personal thoughts and secrets in front of total strangers - a few times I was surprised the words "this is a deep movie" didn't just flash across the screen in case anybody missed the point - and people flying off the handle and making unrealistically insensitive statements to each other (which the other person then completely overreacts to, and both begin screaming, all for the apparent purpose of creating "drama".) There is no subtlety or ambiguity anywhere in the mix. Everything is clearly spelled out for the viewer in broad day-glo strokes. It reeks of "Look at us! We're 'complex' characters" instead of ringing true-to-life. It feels like watching a grown-up, tattooed version of "Beverly Hills 90210". With excellent cinematography.

What I want to know is, in a movie where they went so far as to use real sex for veracity, didn't they put any work into having the situations or characters be anything like true-to-life? Are we to believe that a relationship counselor would get so worked up as to physically slap a client over his eagerness to have had a therapeutic "epiphany", and then confide in him that she's never had an orgasm? Even worse, are we expected to believe the scene where a remotely-controlled vibrator concealed in her crotch repeatedly fires at the worst possible moment, forcing her to involuntarily beat the tar out of somebody? Let alone that the husband who claimed to care so much about her orgasm would "misplace" the remote by leaving it in his back pocket during a sex party? Or that someone would then mistake it (a pink remote labeled "trapped hummingbird" and "buzzing bee") for a TV remote, inadvertently triggering the beating? If this all had been meant as comedy and played for laughs, in a slapstick film, it might have worked. As it is, it was all just far-fetched and stupid, saved from being embarrassingly bad only by the actors' considerable skills. Is this what the audiences at Cannes appreciate? The "concealed vibrator" scene was the single worst case, but this sort of contrived situation is present to one degree or another throughout the whole film. People share secrets, people argue. The characters develop, but in many cases no reasons or motivations are presented for them doing so - it just sort of happens, to drive the story along. People have hangups for no reason we can tell, then they overcome them arbitrarily, also for no reason we can tell, other than that the picture needs an ending. I was not surprised at all to learn the actors were allowed to participate in the writing process. Beneath the excellent production and performances, something very amateurish seemed to be lurking at this well-made movie's core.

Essentially, Shortbus is a fairy tale about sex, and should be taken as such. Those who are too old for princes, pots of gold and unicorns may enjoy the sex toys, orgasms and freak-folk performers that fill in for them here, and on that level, it's an enjoyable film, if you're not the sort of person likely to be offended by the very explicit content.

But I do hope that someday someone supplies John Cameron Mitchell with source material that rises to the level of his very considerable skills as a filmmaker.

These Are The People In My Neighborhood, III

2007-02-25T07:20:41Z

My living room, 11:15 pm, 2/24/07
[As I was walking through my living room with a glass of wine, my laconic roommate Gil was having a conversation with his friend Dean the video editor.]

Dean: ...all we need is Anna Nicole Smith's body! [pause] There has to be a way.
Gil: Yeah, well, I was outbid.

Ode To A Curl-Up Bug

2007-02-19T23:48:48Z

In memoriam Christopher Hume, Sep. 20 1968-Feb. 17 2007. Ridiculously talented musical prodigy, ludicrous poet, co-conspirator, inspiration, trickster, friend, enemy.

ODE TO A CURL-UP BUG

O! pity the poor maligned curl-up!
Its form, tho' well designed, inspires many to fear!
But many a curl-up has faced
a cruel and untimely fate
'neath some shoe or sneaker well-placed
So it raises its hackles to have some such footwear come near!

Though 'pill bug' it's properly named,
so low on the food chain, one hides behind cautious deceit!
The 'pill bug's kept secret and dear!
Mere 'curl-up' when others are near!
Lest the higher aesthetic, they fear,
of some higher predator find 'pill bug' deliciously sweet!

In the science museum on a visit,
I viewed an exhibit of insects both fearsome and small.
But one creature displayed, I saw not!
"Unworthy of view, or forgot,"
so I thought, 'til chagrined I did spot
In some beetle's food bowl, poor curl-up lay curled in a ball!

Injustice! Whose foul vision is it
that sees fit to visit on poor curl-up such indignation!
Can poet not visit museum
And look upon curl-up, and see 'em
regarded with higher este'em
than chiefly of value as some beetle's mere delectation?
My wrath hits its limit! I must make a stand! Steeling my courage, with clenched fist I tilt towards exhibit!
Beetle and beetle curator be damn'd! By indignant poetic hand I SHALL FREE 'IM!

BUT WAIT!

Unlike my own hue and cry,
Without heave nor sigh the small pill bug awaited his fate.
So stoic, as if deep in thought
In spite of what fortune had wrought
the pill bug appeared undistraught!
As if unconcerned that a curl-up's thought best to be ate!

So nobly it faced its demise?
Rubbing my eyes, I peeked close at small curl-up again.
Yes! Naught but peace shown on his face
Him placid and stately with grace
Disturbed not by impending fate
For such is the curl-up's exemplary practice of zen!

Embarrassed I was, I confess,
For mine lesser grace and finesse than the doomed curl-up shew.
Perhaps, then, this pill bug has shown
a strength we can find of our own
when looms near that darkness unknown,
should we ever come to be ate by a huge insect too!

So heed now all creatures my call!
Should you walk, fly, swim, slither or crawl!
The merest of pill bugs is mightier still than us all!

This poem, previously published on my website, is based on a real experience that happened to me and Chris in the Boston Science Museum in 1993.

Feedback

2007-01-25T04:48:16Z

GOOD COMMUNICATION, LIGHTNING FAST DELIVERY. A++++++++++++++ SELLER. PERFECT TRANSACTION. WOULD DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

Good to hear on eBay. Not so good to hear in bed.

Max's First Movie

2007-01-16T19:02:48Z

The other night I talked to my old friend Zigmo Parchesi, the funniest man in the world. He told me he took his toddler son Max to his first movie. "Oh, yeah?" I asked. "What did you choose to scar him with?"

"Porn. We took him see some hardcore pornography. Told him we were going to show him how he was made. 'Not like that.... not like that... not like that... Yes! Like that!... No, no, not like that!... Not like that... not like that...'"

* * * *

A few years ago, Zigmo moved out to the edge of the woods in northern New Jersey. I asked him, "New Jersey? have you seen the jersey devil yet?" Without missing a beat, he said, "No, I haven't seen the jersey devil, but I have been to the mall."

* * * *

Update, 5/31/07

I almost left out the funniest part.

Zigmo had his first son about 2 years ago. When he was talking about naming the kid, he said they picked the first name "Maxwell" very easily. For the middle name they wanted something to honor their fathers, both of whose names start with the letter "J". So, "Maxwell J. Parchesi". They just had to decide what the J would stand for, that would honor their fathers.

Can you guess what they picked? Think about it for a minute. They geekiest among you may get it. The rest won't.

Starts with 'J'. Honors their fathers. Get it yet?

Jor-El.

As in, Superman's father. Jor-El of Krypton. From the comic book. Maxwell Jor-El Parchesi.

I said, "Jor-El?!?!?!" Zigmo said, "What? He was very wise."

"That's great," I said, "now all you need to do is make sure the none of his peers ever hear of this between, oh, the ages of 8 and 15."

"Oh, he'll have much worse stuff to be embarrassed about at that age than his name," he said. "Like, his father."

I asked if they were going to go with the hyphen or if he was going to wuss out. He said his wife originally pushed for no hyphen, spelling it "Jorel", but Zigmo talked her out of it. Maxwell Jor-El Parchesi.

You probably have to know Zigmo personally to know how lucky that kid is.

Now, kid #2 is on the way. I'm waiting with bated breath. I'm going to suggest "Clea" if it's a girl, "Dormammu" if it's a boy.

Out of sight, out of mind

2006-11-06T08:12:01Z

The other night, as I was laying in bed, I suddenly saw my thoughts from the 'outside'... almost like when you look at your reflection in a mirror. It's like, some people say they have out of body experiences, where they can look down at their body from the ceiling of the hospital room. It was like that except instead of an out of body experience, it was an out of mind experience.

Isn't that weird?

A question of time

2006-10-30T08:45:30Z

The other night I had a dream. This sort of androgynous figure, I think it was a young girl, was causing all sorts of violence. She desperately wanted to be free of linear time, to be able to travel and move around in it however she wanted, and was willing to hurt of or kill to be able to do it.

I asked what she hated so much about being stuck moving forward in time like the rest of us. She said she couldn't stand the constant stream of seconds, one after another after another after another after another... "It's like being covered with a million flies, picking at you." The scary thing was, for a second I knew what she meant. I felt it.

The blogger wishes to note that despite the implications of his choice of phrase above, it has always been his firm believe that we are not moving forward in time. We are standing still, and time is moving backwards around us.

Inspiration & Perspiration

2006-10-25T00:09:30Z

I think it was Edison who said the thing about genius being composed of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. But I feel fairly sure that what he left out, was, it's a particularly joyous sort of perspiring.

Infernal Algebra

2006-10-14T07:44:53Z

Earlier this evening, my friend and I were at the store. I picked a bottle of fine belgian ale out of the cooler. The bottle was priced at $4.59. When I got to the register, my friend was in line ahead of me buying a slice of pound cake. Knowing a good idea when I saw one, I went and picked a slice of pound cake also. I did not know the cost of the slice of cake. When the cashier rang up the slice of pound cake and the bottle of ale, the total was $6.66.

Today's date was Friday the 13th of October.

Q: What was the brand of the ale that I was buying?

--

--

--

A. Duvel, of course.

Funeral business trivia

2006-06-14T07:14:38Z

Despite how solid they look, most coffins are designed to collapse once they have 100 lbs of pressure on them. This way they break before the grave is even finished being filled in, so the grounds crew doesn't have to run around later filling in occasional sinkholes around the cemetery.

My cousin learned this the unfortunate way, after cemetery staff made an awful mistake and he had to bribe a grave digger $100 to get my aunt's body moved from the wrong plot into the right one without an exhumation order or a lawsuit.

In memoriam (nearly)

2006-06-09T20:39:54Z

I'm in Seattle right now, stuck in a youth hostel, which is a truly ridiculous place to sit in a room crying. My grandfather had a massive stroke this morning. I just got the phone call. My mom is en route to Florida. According to my sister they're going to try to keep him alive until she gets there.

I need to do something. Might as well write about him.

I idolize my grandfather. I've never told him. How could I tell him something like that? This is a guy who, when you say "I love you, grandpa", answers with, "Swell." A lot of my mom's side of the family are like that, very straightforward people, not very emotionally demonstrative, which is a trait I dislike, but what are you gonna do.

When my grandmother was terminally ill, my mom told me about it on the phone, and before speaking to grandma & grandpa I said to her, "What am I gonna say to them?" I didn't realize it, but my grandfather had already gotten on the phone, and he said, "You're not gonna say anything. She's your grandmother and you love her very much and you're lucky you had her as long as you did." And that's it - he told me how it was, issue closed. My family is like that. My sister said she had once told him when she was first training to run a marathon. She asked him, "Aren't you proud of me?" - which took screwing up her nerve a bit to ask. He shrugged and said, "People do it." She was so pissed.

Strange, though, because although I've never seen him display much sensitivity, he was an artist for a lot of his life. We have a lot of paintings of his. When I was younger I left a one of those little rubber superballs at his house, and he returned it in the mail nailed onto the nose of a whittled seal. You have to understand, this was the sort of whimsy he never, ever displayed in person. He played the violin, also, when he was younger, but then he took it apart and couldn't put it back together again, which makes him like me in more ways than one.

Here's a story for you. It's real easy to tell you what my grandfather is like, because you may have seen him on TV. Did you ever watch an episode of "Seinfeld" with George Costanza's parents in it? I always said they were exactly like my grandparents. Then a few years ago someone mentioned "Seinfeld" at a family dinner, and someone else said, "I wonder how the Seinfelds are." Turns out they're friends of the family. I think my great-uncle grew up next door to Jerry Seinfeld's dad, or something. When Jerry was in high school, he used to come hang out at my family's factory - where my grandma and grandpa worked the front office. So, I'm not saying it's based directly on them personally, but it's the same circle of people. Certainly the same mentality. So any time I mention my grandfather, if you use George Costanza's dad for your mental picture, it's not a bad fit. So picture that character turning out to have been an avid painter, or carving a seal out of a block of wood to nail a superball to the nose of. It was weird.

One time he also made me sit and listen to big band records, because he didn't like the rock & roll I was listening to ("Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh, incidentally.) I hated his music, and my grandmother yelled at him for making me listen to it... but, you know, he cared, which is something he rarely showed. I didn't even know he liked music.

By accident or design, I'm a bit of a "character", I've been told. My grandfather wasn't... isn't. He's straightforward. He's an old-school child of immigrants and worked his whole life. His dad, who lived until I was in college, worked on the floor of our family's factory until he was 90 years old. He lived to 97.

Christ, I don't know whether to write about him in the past or the present tense. If he survives this stroke, he's fucked. His mother, who also lived long enough for me to remember well, survived a stroke, and she was confined to a wheelchair and could barely speak.

You know what? This is sorrowful but good. He's been alive a very long time, he was slowing down, and he didn't like it.

Two years ago I was down there, and my grandfather was getting out of a chair, and he look up at me and said, "I'm old! I never thought I would be old. But look at me, I'm old." I remember thinking, I hope I'm doing as well at 90 as you are, grandpa.

He's getting laid, too, he has a little old septuagenarian girlfriend who his physical relationship with embarrasses everyone in the family except me. I think it's great. A few years ago we all went to a hotel for the holidays, and everybody arrived to check in at about the same time. Every we all went to our rooms to unpack, we all met down by the pool. After a few hours, somebody said, "Where's Morris and Molly? They never came down." "They must have been tired after unpacking. They must be taking a nap." "Oh, that must be it," someone else said, "they're taking a nap." I started to nod and looked at my sister, and she was shaking her head and mouthing the words at me, "DON'T SAY IT. DON'T SAY IT."

He refuses to stop driving, it's been a bone of contention between him and my mom for a couple of years now. He did something scary when I was down there last month, we were in the car waiting to make a left turn at a red light and as soon as there were no cars coming in the opposite direction he said, "OK, you can go." We pointed out that the light was still red and he confessed that he hadsn't been paying attention. But he won't stop. Until not too long ago he had a volunteer job - until recently he's always taken volunteer jobs - driving other old folks around to their doctors appointments. He lived in one of the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. A wall got blown clean out of the building next to his, and he lived without phone or electricity for like 8 days or 12 days or something. My mom found someone who had a relative who lived not too far away but still had phone service, and was willing to go pay a call on grandpa to see how he was doing. "So," I asked when mom told me about it on the phone, "he's alright?" "Oh, sure, he found a restaurant with a generator, he was taking Molly out for the early bird special."

But last time I was there I asked when he does with his days and it was the first time he didn't have an interesting answer for me. He puttered around the house, played with the computer, that was about it. I privately wondered what the next few years of his life were going to be like, how a workaholic like him was going to deal with slowing down like this. If this stroke kills him it may be a mercy. God, I can't believe I just wrote that.

This is sudden. That's the amazing thing. At 90, if he dies today, it will be a sudden and untimely death. He wasn't a frail old man, slipping away. He was grandpa. He was like an oak tree. He was hale and not going to die any time soon.

Not long before my great-grandfather died, he told grandpa, "97 is too long to live. 80 would have been enough." I heard grandpa telling someone this not long afterwards. He seemed spooked.

For two people who were so different, we were a lot alike in a lot of strange ways, and I identified with him because of it. Besides the artistic leanings, we also had the same taste in food. If I liked something, I knew he'd like it, and vice-versa. Except for borscht. Everyone in my family likes borscht, I think it's gross. But other than that we like the same things: we liked our fries burned to a crisp, we liked spicy food. Like everyone else in my family, he had a taste for alcohol as well, although he was mysteriously content with just getting a buzz on. I don't remember ever seeing him noticeably drunk. I always respected that ability. Wish I had it.

I guess that's all, right now.

Lock Of Ages

2006-04-16T21:09:04Z

I have one of those old Kryptonite locks on my bike. I've had it for years. It used to be my regular bike lock, but it got really sticky until I was worried that the next time I locked it I wouldn't be able to open it again. So I got a new lock. I kept the Kryptonite lock on the bike, though, because I figured I could open it one more time, and someday I might want to permanently lock something of someone's to something else when they weren't around. This was a couple of years ago. I just looked down at it today and realized it's one of those damn locks you can open with a Bic pen.

NOTE:The blogger wishes you to know that he did not use any further puns like 'my locky day' or 'for those about to lock' out of consideration for you, the reader.

Report On My Weekend

2006-03-01T07:37:25Z

My god, if I knew how my little weekend of excursions was going to turn out, I would have made it an event and invited you all along. My report:

PT. 1: Cold Wind To Valhalla

On Saturday at 1430 hours I procured a late model red Chevy Cavalier. One of those self-driving models so I would be free to hang out the windows and waggle my tongue at the hoi polloi as I sped past. Although finances dictated that this would not be an extended sojourn into the greater countryside I packed for several days as a precaution. Having grilled Rick and Mike B____ for information, I decided on a trip into Marin to locate a suitably pastoral swimming hole in which to ease away my troubles. On advice of Rick, I headed for Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Samuel P. Taylor is beautiful, but if you blink, you'll miss it. One road through, with one already-full campground, and every likely swimming hole packed with cars. And so it came to pass that I found myself on the other side, driving through the woods above Pt. Reyes National Seashore.

At about 5:30, I came to a stop at Sky Trail head, where I was offered a choice of the trail uphill, into the wooded hills, or downhill, into the lowlands and scrub. A few minutes into the scrub it became apparent that the trail was going to stick close to the road rather than dip down into the lovely gullies and valleys as expected, so up into the hills I went.

Sky Trail is stunningly beautiful. After passing a number of hikers between the trailhead and Sky Camp, a backcountry campground about a mile in, I found myself alone on the trail for very long stretches, catching gorgeous views of the ocean from on high. This is the first solitude I have found since being caught on the back playa in a sandstorm last Burning Man, and probably the first true solitude I have encountered anywhere in the Bay Area in the entire time I've lived here.

Sky Trail begins as a dirt road and over the course of a few miles narrows gradually to a footpath. Each bend in the path revealed more beauty and I simply could not turn back. I saw deer, flurrying glimpses of what I think were grouse, flowers that looked like orchids or lillies, a small black beetle, and almost no humans for miles. Every turn in the trail reveal a new, beautiful vista or forested glade, and I was compelled forwards until I was a little over 4 miles in, where the path rounds its final hill and begins its descent to the shore.

And then
the
sun
went
down

Pt. II: Hymn 43

I passed a sign that indicated I was 3 miles past Sky Camp, so I had covered about 5 miles in all, including jaunts up and down side trails just to check them out. The sun had begun to creep towards the horizon. The sign indicated that another mile further, Sky Trail met the Coast Trail far below, which, I knew from signs at the trail head, would meet the first path I had started down through the scrub at the bottom and then after a 3 mile uphill hike lead me back up to the car. Although Sky Trail had just entered new and even more beautiful terrain, I decided to turn back and walk the 4 miles over which I had just come, rather than walk at least one more mile down to the coast and three miles uphill back to the car plus the unknown length of the Coast Trail between the Sky Trail and the trail back up the road. I estimated I had enough time to return over the 4 miles I had just walked by last light, plus the trail over which I'd come had a lot of western exposure, so I'd be able to milk the sunset for all it was worth. I congratulated myself on making an intelligent decision and turned back.

Not intelligent enough, as it turned out. Having left at 5:30 pm to go hiking in shorts and a t-shirt and without a flashlight, any further attempts at intelligence were probably a moot point. So, I soon found myself walking alone through the woods in the dark wearing only my beachwear.

It's amazing how fast it gets dark in the woods. The sky was still light, but under the canopy things began to take on an ominous tone. The birds sang for quite a while longer than I expected into the approaching night, but eventually they stopped, and I heard the wee nocturnal beasties began to slither, pad, and prowl... the raccoon, I imagined, the fox, the mountain lion, the sasquatch, the giant carnivorous centipede, the mothman, and various other Mikevores looking for an easy meal of stupid hiker, all skulking just beyond visibility in the growing gloom. I passed gallows and a sign on which was written in blood "Beware" and large creatures circled above through the treetops on the edge of my vision. Yes, the mind does play tricks, doesn't it. Having just had the creepy experience of being harassed by an unseen, mewling mountain lion while scoping an event location up in the Berkeley Hills a few weeks ago, my senses were on edge.

I began jangling my keys as I walked. I began to get the doppleganger, which I had noticed earlier in the day, but which came on more strongly as my hearing grew more acute in the gloom. You know when you're walking through the woods, and with every step you take you hear an concurrent step 20 feet behind you, or just off the path behind the brush? Every time you stop, it stops, but hollering at it does no good and as soon as you are going again, there it goes. That's when you know you have to hurry up, because if you let the doppleganger catch up, it will overtake you and reach your car before you, at which point it will pull out a key identical to yours, and drive back to civilization and say rude things to all your friends and family - leaving you with a hell of a lot to explain when you get home, besides being stranded at the trailhead without a ride. This actually happened to a friend of mine.

It was a relief when I finally reached Sky Camp again - both to hear human voices, and to know I was only a little over a mile from the road. The last of twilight was fading into night, but the last stretch of trail finally widened to dirt road. I walked along in the darkness, jangling my keys the whole way, not in the least comforted by the familiar noise.

What security I experienced at some semblance of civilization passing Sky Camp soon dissipated. As I walked past an open meadow on the trailside, a shape sat in the dark and and watched me pass. Tough call - you could have told me it was a large bush, and I would have believed you, or you could have told me it was a sasquatch, and I would have believed you. The meadow was shaded maddeningly from the moonlight by the treeline, and in the gloom it was impossible to tell if the thing really did shift to observe me I crossed its field of vision. As long is it didn't get up and bolt towards me, I stayed on the close side of sheer panic and kept an even gait, swinging my keys. It sat on its haunches and I kept my ears open for massive footsteps from behind as I passed back into the trees. The darkness was silent.

Suddenly I heard a sinister whisper up ahead. I trained my eyes and saw movement on the slope right next to the trail. Brigands! At this point they surely were aware of my approach, but having nothing of value with me and presumably still being within shouting distance of the campers at Sky Camp I forged through. As I walked past them, the smell of jasmine incense filled the air... hippie brigands, sitting on the wooded hillside, burning incense and smoking pot as they no doubt waited for some hapless traveler to stumble into their crutches. I "put on my wings", a threatening manner of walking I learned when I used to have to pass through Times Square on my way to work at three in the morning, and they wisely let me pass without incident.

A last moment of danger came as I reached the portion of the trail near the road and was momentarily relieved by headlights glinting through the trees. Until I heard a car pass by a few minutes later on the other side of me, and realized that the brief discs of light I had seen flash to my left were in the opposite direction from the road. Whatever's eyes had flashed at me in the dark, it had allowed me to pass, perhaps preferring to gorge itself upon my doppleganger, which I at this point realized was no longer audible.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

The most evil words

2006-02-12T11:31:05Z

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty."
-Stanislaw J. Lec

I think "fuck 'em" are the most evil two words, the worst thought, in the english language.

Maybe they're not terribly evil, said once, by themselves. But no words are. Catastrophic evil is a compound phenomenon.