The Final Word in Dating Advice c. 1943

I'm not really sure what the connection is between separating your knees and goose-stepping for the Fürher, but I suspect this was written by the progenitors of the prigs who brought us The Rules in the mid-90s. Still, young Adolph looks like a cute if slightly more hirsute member of Archie's gang - not exactly fearsome. Though I still fail to see the reasoning here, I feel a better tagline would have been: "Loose hips sink ships."

Just reading this makes me feel the same

Worse than it looks

Never get in an argument with a socket wrench, especially when you are supine, twenty feet back under a deck in a very confined space. Especially not when you are sleep deprived and fail to notice that you've managed to sink the bolt in the joist already and there's not much more for the tool to hold onto and all your arm strength is going to bring that metal club down faster and harder on your forehead.



Did it hurt? I cracked my frontal lobe so hard I yelped and instantly felt a sharp pain at the back of my skull. Still, I shed no tears, but was nervous enough about it to think I'd better get myself out from under there in case I'd given myself a concussion. It might have taken a while before I'd be found and rescued. So I crawled out in under a minute, but not before I already had a goose egg about half the size a chicken might lay. Blood moves fast! It happened Tuesday afternoon, but oddly, the bruise under my eye didn't emerge until Wednesday, and yesterday emerged across the bridge of my nose and down my cheek. There is almost no bruising at the point of impact , which is now a small lump over the start of my eyebrow. I looked half-Neanderthal a couple hours after it happened, as I iced it for 4-5 hours and the lump got shorter but broader in scope.



What is most interesting to me is that since I went all raccoon-eyed and especially going out last night, I'm getting all kinds of strange come-on energy from men, and I don't mean it in the "Oh, come on!" kind of way. Seems to bring out a bit of the brush-ape, as my step-father is fond of saying. It's half-titillated and half-protective, and I never expected it, though I suppose I should have, sex and violence lurking together in our primitive brains. Anyway, the entire thing has been fairly amusing to me, and I'm glad the headache is mostly gone. Now I have a black dog, a black eye, and, my boyfriend would like me to add, a black, black heart.

Gimme One

I dare you not to laugh.

My Dog: Convalescing or Merely Malingering?

(Duff and Levi on Levi's birthday a few years ago.)

Sorry I've not been posting and have failed to update you on the status of the canine beast I call my friend. Duff's status is status quo. He has been home for about a month, after two straight weeks+ at the vet. For three weeks I took him in twice daily to be catheterized, then the vet trained me to empty his bladder. So then it was once daily for a week, and now it is reduced to twice weekly for acupuncture. This is good, because all the expense was getting, well, expensive, and as much as I love lugging around 85+ lbs. of dog several times a day, I'm not sure it's the best thing for my back. The boogie board an old roommate left behind has come in very handy, and the vet techs were highly amused to see "King Duff" ride in on the Mach 5. They have been very kind and tease me that he is faking the entire thing so he can ride about on his palanquin (ok maybe THEY didn't call it that, but my BF and I do), like an oriental emperor.



He's gained some weight back, but no hind leg muscle. He gets some physical therapy, which I administer with help from the BF, but it leaves him sore and cranky with me. I can't really say he's making progress in that area, but I'm also aware that he's not out of pain yet, and spinal problems have long recovery times.

There are, however, no guarantees, although we did see remarkable activity one day at the vet's when he tried to chase down a King Charles Spaniel bitch who had recently whelped. Duff pushed forward with his hindquarters like a seal chased across a beach. I turned to the vet and said, "Maybe THAT'S what he needs." What other conclusion could I draw?



(Imagine her with milky paps, and you've got pure, unadulterated Duff porn.)

He chases rabbits in his sleep, he is often happy and almost always bright and alert. Formerly a very quiet and contented dog, he is now maddeningly yelpy. It is sourced in his helplessness, I am sure. The last two nights I have gotten him to remain on the bed and he has slept much better. This is a great relief, because he was getting me up three to eight times and often I spent most of the night on the floor beside him, as it kept him more calm. Both of us being aloft on the mattress is much easier on my old lady joints, even if he still keeps me up.

Characteristically unwilling to sully the nest, he refuses to release bodily functions inside the house, so all methods of evacuation are performed by me. Aand let me tell you, it is not so glamorous as it seems, but often leads to Kubrickian cinematic references, wherein I speak to my gloved forefinger: "Danny's not here right now, Mrs. Torrance."

His already expensive Innova diet is mightily fortified with all manner of additives - high lignan flax seed oil, spirulina, enzymes, herbs, raw organic colostrum, raw organic grassfed to the bitter end free-range beef, saw palmetto, sweet potato...

One of the worst things about all this, aside from the fatgue and the emotional unrest (which I will spare you for now), is that the experience is rendering me an entirely boring person who can talk only of one subject, and thinks that others are remotely interested in her dog's diet. I promise I think of other things, but this has been fairly consuming.

Many friends have reported dreams in which my dog is walking and running and quite well. This is encouraging to me, as I put stock in such things. Just today I received this kind message from on of you regular readers (I hope it's okay I reprinted it here, anonymously):

Well I finally had a dream with you in it. Never got to see you, but I had two 4x4 blackboards that I had turned into get well cards for Duff. I had all these great sayings on them that I can't remember what they were, which
really bothers me cuz I usually remember that stuff from my dreams. I woke up still trying to find a box to ship them in."

Dear Sir, consider them received.

(A recent photo of me, brimming with hope.)

Parmenides was a punk

I clicked onto a Yahoo! news link just now that read, "Research finds deadly rogue waves can form from nothing." Evidently ex nihilo nihil fit is now null and void, because something can come from nothing. I'm sure our resident physicist will have something to say on this matter, hey?

Or maybe the monster waves come from the "Bloop," as yet unseen and probably the largest creature on earth.

This is me being optimistic

My dog lost 13 lbs in ten days, more than a tenth of his body weight, a fact which has not alarmed the vet, though Duff's spine is now protruding. He was very lean at 95 lbs when I brought him in. I had a meltdown about it Monday and mostly I am just missing him. I can bring him home and let him recuperate here once he can pee on his own, when that will be I don't know. I don't see why I can't manage a catheter myself, but as hard as I'm working to pay the vet bills, it's probably just as well he is in their care. His spirits are good, they say, but he raises up a storm of clamor every time I leave, and lately he's been barking quite a bit during the day. Anyway, trying to be strong about this, but mostly I just miss him crowding me out of the way when I open the refrigerator door.

Praying for a Miracle

Those of you who have read my blog for a while probably know about my beloved dog, Duff. Ten years old with the physique of a five year old, nearly a hundred lbs., and as robust and good an animal as any I've had the privilege to know, the fellow was stricken with a mystery illness last Wednesday evening. Characteristically healthy as a horse, and practically built like one, he worked with me all day with no sign of discomfort or fatigue, then refused to get up when the work day was over. I got him to walk across the street to our house, after much cajoling, but he collapsed in a heap in the hallway and refused to budge. He couldn't even lift his head without crying out in immense pain, this same boy who busted my windshield with his head without so much as a whimper when he was a teenager.



I spent the night on the floor with him, trying to catch sleep between his whimpers and small restless movement. The next morning, my birthday, I took him into the vet, who shot him full of cortisone, took x-rays, ran bloodwork, and ended up stymied as to his diagnosis. One thing seems certain - he has a neurological problem which could be a tumor, a muscular disease, or even an adverse reaction to a simple bee sting or insect bite. He is much improved as regards his pain, and is now drinking and eating well, but aside from raising his head and wagging his tail, he can neither stand nor walk.

I remarked to a friend how beyond the obvious attachments and the less obvious fact that this shiny black friend of mine is clearly a replacement for the children I don't have, one can't underestimate the attachment of a being that is always in our presence. It isn't just that I love him, and I do immensely, it is that he is a part of my physicality - he is integrated into every step I take during the day. If I cook, I reach down to place on the floor the bowl with remnants of dinner for his enjoyment. If I go out, I consider how long I can rightly leave him alone. When I doze, I know that I will sleep better hearing his breath, and even the constant mounting and dismounting of the bed as he changes his position to find a better temperature equilibrium. In our time together, I'm sure I have swallowed and breathed in enough of his hair to choke a cat. He is in some ways the closest living being to me.



I know it's easy to dismiss the depth of a bond between humans and animals, to trivialize it as something less real, but I am sure it is not. What it is is less complicated, less fraught with neurotic longings, conflicts, and expectations. It is easier to have a more "pure" relationship to our pets, and I sincerely wish more of us could learn to behave more like them and less like us, because they really don't take things too personally, they just love.


Anyway, if you have time for a little prayer or something else you believe in to send his way, I would be grateful, because I'm just not ready to let go of him yet.

More Political Bicker

Just got back from the theater. Go see this movie. I'm not generally a fan of war films (nor particularly averse), but I'll see any sort of historical piece or costume drama. I really enjoyed this one. The cinematography, landscape, and people are just gorgeous. The clothes aren't half bad, either.

Political Bicker

This sign stands outside of Hollywood Billiards, a monster sports bar with quite a diverse clientele - douchebags of all varieties flock here when the game's on. If crowded, it takes 45 minutes to get a pitcher. Lame. Anyway, I don't necessarily agree, but I thought the sign was amusing.

For Bobby and his new bride

On Marriage


You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.


Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.


Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

- Kahlil Gibran, 1923

Pop Secret

No fucking way...

On Anxiety

"Just because you're watching Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't mean you're going to get killed."

- My very good friend Joe.

The Politics of Facial Hair

My excessively handsome BF is going through what I like to call his "Jim Morrison: American Prayer" phase. First the hair grew long, which I love, especially since it turns into perfect, soft sausage curls, like Gainsborough's Blue Boy, the Fauntleroy craze in the late 1800s, or those Orthodox ringlets they wear down in the Fairfax and Wilshire areas. Next came The Beard. I'm not a fan of any sort of stylized facial hair. Soul patches, Fu Manchus, moustaches, Van Dykes and the lot really give me an impression that the dude sportin' is having serious self-image issues, or that he's going to slip a Ketamine in my latte. Judgemental, superficial and unfair? Perhaps. Probably, but moustaches are the province of 70s porn stars, and unless you plan on buying a Chevy Van and trolling local school yards, I suggest it's not a prudent choice of veneer. The Van Dyke can sometimes be maybe sorta ok. (Who made me arbiter of facial hair style? No one. Now, shut up and do what you're told.)

But an honest beard? Despite the tendency of some of those upper lip hairs to wiggle up into a girl's nose when in full embrace, and the abrasive growing out stage, I can get behind a full beard. A bit of grooming is fine, but I really have a hard time being attracted to a man who looks like he overly primps. Dressing well is nice and good hygiene essential, but too sleek, too hyper-obsessively clean, is not sexy to me.

So I'm good with BF expressing his inner Grizzly Adams. Too bad his mother screamed when he landed back home in Texas this week. It seems The Beard may be coming off soon.

Little Ralphie Parker's Friend, Flick

In a few years, that kid will get himself stuck to a cold metal post. I must say, my first reaction was, "Eww..." Then I had to admit to myself that it is precisely the sort of thing I'd have done as a child. Or now. But you know, pigs are very clean. Or so people like to tell you.

On Releasing Blame

Forgiveness is the fragrance
that the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it.

- Mark Twain


(painting by Godward, With Violets Wreathed and Robe of Saffron Hue, 1902)

6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World

Sorry, he's not telling you to take the "magic" kind.

Understanding Serendipity*

Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide?



If you are unaware of the annual TED Conference in Monterrey, acquaint yourself with these amazing lectures that cover arts, sciences, and human life, available on YouTube and on the TED: Ideas Worth Spreading website. I'll be posting more of my personal favorites over the weeks to come.


* 1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck

Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that "this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word." Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of...."

For Chuckleberry

The expression slays me.

Party Like It's 1953

The family that drinks together...

A friend took this photo at the Hollywood 7-11. Gives new meaning to the phrase, "Keeping up with the Joneses."

A Lunney By Any Other Name...

Have you ever noticed the resonance and disonance that can exist between a name and its bearer? Some people seem so well dubbed that another name would be impossible, whereas others wear their appellations like second-hand shirts. I have, on rare occasions, had great difficulty speaking the names of very close friends because they were so ill-suited to the person. The most notable example was an old boyfried whom I called by another name entirely, and one which turned out to be the childhood pet name his father gave him.

In any case, this man seems utterly suited to his name, and inspired by this notion, I charge you with a game: submit examples of names that fit and those that don't. It will be like our Sounds Like endeavor of '06 and the successor in '07.

I wonder if you'd think my name seems like me?

Extra, Extra

Why is this news?

Better off dead

I have been putting off having a much needed garage sale for a couple of weeks now, because truthfully they fill me with dread. It is so annoying to be haggled down by misers who show up an hour before the posted time, rifling through your stuff, trying to buy while you are still setting up, and ultimately nickel-and-diming you over brand new things you are selling at twenty percent of their original value. I resent the fact that it regresses me back to middle-school behaviors, like eye-rolling. Frankly, I find it depressing.

And if that weren't bad enough, now I've come to understand that among the many compulsive, odd, and ill-socialized sorts who frequent the neighborhood flea markets are folks like this:

(on Craigslist)

If you are having an estate sale you'd better be dead!! (Towards The Light!)

Date: 2008-05-06, 8:58AM PDT

Otherwise it's a yard sale...or a garage sale...or an apartment sale...house sale...or even an alley sale...if that's where it's taking place...but if it's an estate sale...that means you are NO LONGER of this earth...hence..you have an estate ( read...items owned by the deceased!!! ) If you are having an estate and moving sale...you should be moving to the great beyond! I'm tired of misrepresented sales...List honestly!!

Or what, exactly, does he propose to do about it? Send the proprietors Towards the Light? Does that not sound like a New Age cult to you? And is it actually possible to run a sale from The Great Beyond? If I die, do I still actually own my junk? I was under the impression that we leave our earthly possessions behind, but I am positively thrilled to know that I will be kickin' it* old school, King Tut style!! Thanks, you total freak, you have given me hope.

Still, here's an idea, Buddy, hunt down a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. Three dots are not connectors; they indicate an omission. They cause us to read between the lines. So unless you want us to think that what you aren't saying is some sort of homocidal rant or that you are inviting us to a game of MadLibs, LEARN TO USE ELLIPSES PROPERLY. Because misrepresentation is misrepresentation.

Anyway, I confess I have no garage.

(* 'it' being The Bucket.)

Wherein the Blog-mistress posits a grammar question and bores her readers

Maybe you can clear something up for me. All through my brief stint in Academia, I was taught that when incorporating a quotation into a longer sentence, one is meant to put the necessary punctuation inside the quotation marks, so long as it doesn't change the essential meaning intended by the original speaker/writer. For example, try this sentence:

Roosevelt's aphorism, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," marks him as a forerunner of the New Age Movement.

You might consider that statement absurd, funny, or even annoying, but you cannot deny that the presence of the comma does nothing to adulterate the meaning of his words, though my editorializing might. Were I to insert a question mark before the end-quotes we would have a problem, and you might think FDR a big sissy-man.

Maybe that is why people are having some sort of aversion, because nowadays, I see sentences like this happening:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", would not have been punctuated thusly in FDR's time.

Was there a conference on this? I don't remember signing any petition... Did we vote on it? I don't see the need for it, and it just looks messy.

Because really, there are no guarantees

Which is why I feel these two belong together:

Your Moment of Zen

I don't even know what to say, this is so amazing.

We have secretly removed your memories and replaced them with a set of new and improved ones.

She landed in Bosnia under sniper fire. That's what happened, says the former First Lady, and that's why she's got better experience than her opponent.



Even if it were true, it doesn't show me her "toughness," rather it demonstrates poor decision making. Why would she bring her daughter into the line of fire? What's that little braided girl doing there? Sheryl Crow, the talentless do-gooder? I would have lied about being there at all given that musical line-up.

Copernicus Wept

From the deep and penetrating mind of an online journalist: "...In related news, it was also revealed that Daylight Saving Time actually creates no additional daylight." Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Mr. Null, your surname says it all.

A Movie I'd Like to See, v iii: There Will Be Bloods

A story of star-crossed lovers, wherein crusty oilman, Daniel Plainview, and gangsta baby mama*, played by Kelis, are caught in the blackgold typhoon of his turf war with her old man's posse. We know why she brings all the boys to the yard, and he drinks her milkshake. He drinks it up!



*Gary Coleman plays H.W.

Affleck

It's nice to see a star who has fallen so far out of the good graces of the critics and his public start to regain a foothold. I especially appreciate Brad Pitt's participation in this, and the ironic dedication.

Rach Out!

Me and my homies

Thank God we kept our noses clean (although somebuddy's got awfully hirsute sinus cavities). That's Tex, on the right.



Here I'm presenting Buddy, in my ersatz Vanna White impersonation, at our local watering hole.



This one's of me, triumphing over evil, and not in some odd, compromised sexual mischief (I don't swing that way, anyway). Actually, it's my sweet erstwhile roommate, Rachel P., on her birthday, and that naughty bug, Levi. She thought it would be fun to rent sumo suits and have a wrassling contest in Griffith Park. It was fun, especially rolling her down the hill in that big balloon she's wearing. I don't know what Levi thought of it, but he was glad to be running around and sneaking treats.



Here's Rachel's man and Tex, about to square off.



Tex and me at a friend's costumed birthday party last month. The theme was 1978. Tex wore his '07 Halloween costume, Brian Fantana. It was a good opportunity for me to wear my vintage cotton dress from that period, the one that looks like Rainbow Brite vomited up the Crayola box. I confess the last time I wore that was also on Halloween (c. 04, I believe), when I met this man. Apparently, he liked the dress.



Here's my very dear friend, JMT (you might recognize him from the tube), at the same party, with his old friend RH (and my newer one) in the white cap. They're just a couple of dumbass hicks from Georgia. JMT describes RH as, "delightfully unhinged." That describes a lot of people I know.

Hell Just Froze Over

Litigate, You Will, Jodee Warrior!

Sometimes old news is still good news, and this one is also true.

Though long ignored by most of the press, Yoda had a few things to say about the incident -

Interviewer: What do you think about Jodee's efforts to win the beer selling contest?

Yoda: Do or do not... there is no try.

Interviwer: Well, she did "win," after all, on both counts.

Yoda: Jodee's strength flows from the Force.

Interviewer: Which is why she ultimately got her Toyota?

Yoda: Always in motion is the future.

Interviewer: Jodee left her place of work following her disappointment. What is your feeling about Hooters?

Yoda: Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?

Interviwer: Do you find the Toy Yoda to be a flattering likeness?

Yoda: When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.

Interviewer: Any final thoughts?

Yoda: May the Farce be with you.

I am like those birds

come to rest awhile before the next leg -
dislocated, confused by the static wake
of the lover who leaves.

Seeking refuge among humans is a desperate act
at best
one more break and you wonder
if you've ever been in love at all.



I hear the utterances
a coo
a caw
the hum of something they’ll eat later.
These simple words scrawl,
finger-waves across the lake
the curls and spines on an unsteady page.
I can read,
I can form these sound.
I don't know what they mean anymore.

When they go the should-be silence
is shattered in complaint
of what is left behind
a jeer
a cavil
a cry
the shrike cleaving the black and blue calm of night
as she climbs, as she dives
What will answer?

The opposite of love is nothing.



(photo: Hiroji Kobuta, China 1979)

Chivalry

“There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded desireable, that calls for art or for character.”

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For the best mythic example of this I know, look at the story of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle.

This is the tits!

When the Spirit of the Lord moves you... More evidence that the profane really is sacred AND super funny.

(thanks to Dooce for posting this.

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there.

Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”


-Joseph Campbell

Task to Be Who I Am

I'm ordered out to a big hump of stone as if I were an aristocratic corpse from the iron age.
The rest are still back in the tent sleeping
stretched out like spokes in a wheel.
In the tent the stove is boss,
The big snake that swallows a ball of fire and hisses.
It is silent out here in the spring night amongst the stones waiting for the dawn.
In the cold I start to fly like a shaman to her body, some places pale from her swimming suit
the sun shone right on us, the moss was hot
I brush along the side of warm moments
But I can't stay here long
I am whistled back through space;
I crawl among the stones
Back to here and now.
Task: to be where I am.
Even when I am in this solemn and absurd role
I am still the place where creation does a little work on itself.
Dawn comes, the sparse tree trunks take on color now
The frost-bitten forest flowers form a silent search party after something that
has disappeared in the dark
But to be where I am and to wait.
I am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused
Things not yet happened are here and now
I feel that—they're just out there—
A murmuring mass outside the barrier
They can only slip in one by one.
They want to slip in.
Why?
They do one by one.
I am the turnstile.


Tomas Tranströmer (b. 1931)

Monkey!

I'm going to go ahead and say that they are actually better at this than I am...

Season of Gimme

(...us every one!)

For Huck - Keep Fighting the Good Fight (which really means, PLAY!)

RESPECT

: (ri-'spekt; Latin) 
" From respicere -- the act of looking back,
regard, the act of giving particular attention,
consideration, esteem."
                          • Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Respect is not fear and awe; 
it denotes, in accordance with 
the root of the word (respicere), 
the ability to see a person as (they are), to be aware of (their) unique individuality. 
                  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

And your first born child...

and any sense of autonomy and free choice you might have imagined you actually had.

Since the elections seem more and more a sham, Why don't we just let Simon, Randy and Paula Abdul decide the outcome of this upcoming one, folks?

Would-Be Michelangelo

At the bar on Friday, I point out to my friend, Joe K., that the esteemed sculptor of David was gay, a notion he fights a bit. I tell him my first such inclination was when I saw how he rendered women - as muscle-bound burly men - and the idea was supported by allusions to his "infatuations" with pretty youths in historical accounts. Don't know that Vasari touched on that aspect, but the proof's in the work, People, if you're asking me.

In any case, he is impressed by the sculpture, and rightly so. Though I had little care for the decor of The Vatican when I saw it in 2001, The Pieta was positively stunning, and one of the few pieces of art that has provoked tears from me (Guernica's another, funny as I've never seen the original and I don't particularly care for Picasso). For that matter, I'm not really fond of Christian art generally, but the power of the gesture in the mother holding her dead child is something to see.



Joe, who is some kind of quirky artist, turns to me and says, how do you go about making something like that? "Well Joe, you get yourself a big hunk of marble, some tools, and about a decade of apprenticeship to a master..."

Joe interjects, "Naw, I'm goin' right in there!"

Ironic Film Review

This analysis of Beowulf from one of "the people":

"The film was great, but not epic."

The Epistle of Adam, v. 1

I'm quite sure I've told you about him, the lank boy from Santa Cruz who wore a fly-fisherman's hat and oversized oxford cloth shirts, as he slothed about campus. Wooden, implacable, sensual, withholding, and impossibly bright, he would positively hate that I am reprinting any of his words here. If I didn't trespass against him, this would never see the light of day. Maybe that would be better.

Here's a letter, written when Adam was maybe less than twenty:


I'm sure I never told you about my one attempt to speak to Robert Kim. Perhaps you remember Robert -- Korean, moon-faced, obscure--but you may not know that he was my near neighbor for several years. I never saw him at home, and never spoke to him at school, but we both knew of our proximity. During my sophomore year, before you and I met, I suffered periods of despair and panic; I lost my reason and my calm. During these attacks I would cast round wildly for relief, believing at times that remedy lay in drugs, sleep, exercise, meditation, study, art, or philosophy. Once, while afflicted, I was sure that Robert Kim was a sage of sorts, wise in the Oriental tradition, and that he could ease my turmoil and teach me the way to peace. I do not exaggerate. I remember imagining his vast greasy face with an expression of composed bliss, one finger raised as he spoke: "The key to happiness is organization." That maxim was all I could hear in my reveries, but he delivered it as an earnest of more to come, if I would only hearken. I have said that my reason, and my shame, deserted me at those times, so I saw no absurdity in the idea: I was to find Robert Kim and beg his tutelage. That organization was the key to happiness made sense, and I knew that his room would be organized. I walked down the street to his door and knocked, without preparing myself for an introduction or rehearsing any explanation for my sudden visit. His mother answered the door, and I asked for Robert. He was not at home, so I left, and gave up the whole business immediately as rank folly and idiocy. What if he had been there? What if I had gone to his room--I imagined it as upstairs--and tried to tell him why I had come? What if a classmate whom you did not know came to your door, told you he was abject and hopeless, and asked for your teachings? I was quite addled in those days, and many knew it. For example, I had two acquaitances (sic), John and Bobby, whose surnames I can't remember. You would recognize them: John used to stride across the front lawns at lunchtime wearing headphones, and Bobby rode a large motorcycle to school. They didn't look much alike, except for their short hair, but one day I confused them and called John Bobby, and thereafter I could never get it right. If one approached I would get giddy, and loudly hail him with the wrong name, and laugh foolishly. There was no malice behind it, and I was red-faced each time, but I couldn't help myself. For a while they corrected me glumly, then they stopped acknowledging me. And I was friendly with a girl named Cayenne, who had a small yurt dome in her back yard where she held parties. One night, after a party, I was walking home up the Laurent hill when the sky turned white and I watched a fiery meteor fall into the bay. I may have mentioned that before now.
I have never told the Robert Kim story, and I can't decide whether my condition today owes more to the meteor or to Robert. I have told almost everybody I know about the meteor, though no one really believes it. I have never told anyone about Robert, and Robert himself probably doesn't know.
Thank you for sending the list of lines from songs. The first eight were easy, but then I began to falter, and ended having named only forty percent of the songs. The Cyndi Lauper quote reminded me of of one more event, perhaps significant. You might have shared a class in our freshman year with a girl named Beth Z. She was small and blonde, very pretty, and remote, well outside our orbit. On hot days she wore bathing suits to her classes. One Saturday morning my stepfather and I drove to the Long's Drugstore at the corner of, what, River and Soquel. Does Soquel Avenue keep its name as it approaches Pacific? You know the place, next to what is now a Zanotto's market. Is it still a Zanotto's market? I will never be an historian. We parked far from the drugstore, near Erik's Cafe, and the car stops, the radio is playing the Lauper song, "Girls Just Wanna, etc." I looked across the wide parking lot to the opposite side, where the river runs and the park begins. A dyke, or a raised bank, follows the roadway there, and I saw a figure walking atop it. You might say, because of the great distance, that I "barely descried" a figure: a blur, a flash, a mote--that sort of sight. In an instant, however, the facts flooded me, and the scene resolved itself as if seen through powerful magnification lenses. The figure was Beth Z., she was returning home from a night spent at a guy's house where she had been ravaged, and her stride was in the song's time, and all of it stung me like a just reproof. Whoa, was I indolent and slothful and halt. Girls just wanna, even Beth Z., especially Beth Z., and the years ahead would be full of dark hours and rent garments and bloodied noses, and shouting and glaring lights and beer. Quite an epiphany, in a moment.

Clownin'

Usually I am strictly repulsed by clowns (I know this is a banal claim, yet they truly unnerve me), but this is hilarious and absurdist enough to smooth down the usual piloerection, er, horripilation (you know, the jimjams, the willies), that clowns normally give. That's not to say it isn't a bit scary -

Happy All Saints Day!

And Happy Woulda Been Seventy-Fifth Birthday, to my Pa!

Still Sick! Didn't stop me from distributing germs as well as candy to all those kiddies, and then going out last night. David Thewlis stopped by with tots in tow. That was almost as cool as meeting Julian Sands on my porch two years ago. Yum. Ok. back to bed.

Happy Halloween!

It's my favorite holiday! And I have the flu! Yay!! But y'all enjoy!!

India Ink

I'm having difficulty writing about my travel experience. It probably doesn't help that people ask me quite often some version of, "Did it change your life?" Because, you know, seeing that kind of poverty inevitably causes a complete restructuring of one's world-view and overhaul of the sensibilities and psyche.

Or not. Or maybe.

India was, for me, an insistent and intense crushing wave of a whole lot of humanity. It was sweat, perfume, stench, chaos, color, disfigurement, pathos, bathos, traffic, gastro-intestinal devastation, percussion, must, garbage, beauty, waste, beauty, sewer, beauty, strife, beauty, beauty, beauty... India was your nose pressed into every curious, ruleless, ruthless, inspired, loving and cruel moment a human being is capable of all at once, all the time. It was very tiring, but I Romanticize a bit, I suppose.

Specific things?

They use mothballs as air freshener and in all the linens. I think they put them in the air vents in one of our hotels - all our clothing reeked of paradichlorobenzene when we returned to the US, even the items that never made it out of the suitcase. In another hotel, they placed two mothballs in the sink trap, so the water would activate the aroma, I guess. It was horrible to breathe. I guess they don't know it's carcinogenic.

The India Times (I didn't expect everything over there to be in English; it was shocking, really) front page related a survey: apparently 52% of Indian women think it's okay for a man to beat his wife. Lord.

Indian hospitality is everything I imagined it would be, and more. "The guest is God," or so the saying goes. We did surmise that is was (therefore?), impossible to run a wedding without offending someone. Our hosts spent better than $150,000, an outrageous sum in any currency, in my estimation. But then, I couldn't see spending over five grand, unless yo daddy's a Rockefeller.

That much non-stop curry and spice makes my intestines feel like a mean little man's been stomping around my duodenum in wooden sabot while he pounds the walls with his angry little fists. I can't face it again for ages.

I have never seen so many beautiful faces in one place in my life. They are just that good-looking.

The amount of garbage laying about everywhere is shameful, and any idea of cleaning it up seems hopeless. I imagine before the advent of plastics, the problem was far less, and that was probably the most significant "white guilt" feeling I had on the trip. Anyhow, the lack of interest in containing it seems a cultural problem of their own making, not one the West brought over, but I do wish the animals and street urchins weren't ingesting it so much of the time.

This brings me to the toilets on the Air India, which were positively filthy within an hour and a half after leaving JFK. I asked my friend Sameer about it. He said, "Affluent Indians are used to having servants for everything, so they don't see why they should have to maintain or clean up after themselves in a facility like that. It's awful." It was just nasty, and all the sinks were clogged as well. I don't get it.

I have never been stared at so much in my life. The children in the rural villages would either giggle or gape in stunned silence. Outside Agra at one of the various Moghul forts we visited, I was repeatedly asked to pose for pictures with Indian families and young men. Many Indian women handed me their infants and toddlers to hold in frame. Sometimes the babes took one look at me and cried. I managed to slow down the insistent mothers long enough to soothe the children before I took them in my arms - you know, hold out a hand, let them tough me first so they knew I wasn't made of fire or something dreadful. It was a pleasure to hold strangers' children, an honor really, though I couldn't really figure out what they wanted it for.

Everything I saw was 15th c or younger, which disappointed me some. This is partly due to the rampaging muslims who came in and tore down the religious whatnot of the various groups who had been coexisting for eons. The Moghuls were rather confused by the general uninterest in fighting back on the part of the Hindus, which apparently cooled their passions sufficiently that they built amazing monuments like the red forts and Taj Mahal. Still, I will have to go back sometime to see the really old stuff.

I didn't know dragonflies came in those colors, and I hadn't seen so many fireflies since I was eight and in Kansas. That evening was pure magic.

More later.

Missing Bombay

That I made it over there at all seems something of a miracle. In the first place, India has long been the foremost travel destination for me. If ever there were a culture for which I have, at the very least, an undeniable aesthetic affinity, it is that one, so the wish has been there for quite a long time. Then last Spring, my very dear old friend from college, Stephen, asked me to go with him to a wedding. He would pay the airfare. So there it was, a free trip and a dream realized. We would meet in Minneapolis, fly to New York for a day and night stop-over, then a twelve-hour layover in London (where I've never been, but plenty of time to get into town and walk about), then on to Mumbai, Goa, Delhi, and Agra.

I confess to some reluctance in me, fear even, about going, once the opportunity actually arrived. I was uncertain principally about how well Stephen and I would get along (because he is the only person in the world I really fight with, and we fight a fair bit - quite like siblings we are), but there was some obscure and inscrutable element blocking my excitement for the trip. It's fairly unusual for me not to know what I'm feeling, but there it was, a grey area.

Maybe it was the unconscious foreknowledge that there would be a very serious impediment - one that jeopardized the entire trip - namely, Ambassador Travel, the passport expediting service that executed neither speed nor reasonable accommodation. I paid for a 48 hour rush turnaround for my India visa, and instead ended up in suspense right past the day I was to fly. On the morning my visa was scheduled to arrive, a Friday, I phoned the service to inquire about the tracking number for the FedEx envelope I believed was about to land on my doorstep. They didn't seem to know what I was talking about really. I had completed my paperwork and signed the credit card slip in their fancy high rise Westwood office on Monday, all by 10:30 a.m. The Indian consulate in San Francisco was closed Tuesday for Gandhi's birthday, but I should have it Friday. Saturday would be the absolute latest. Not exactly 48 hours, mind you, but alright, so long as I had it in my hands Saturday, because I would fly to NY on Monday at noon.

I will not bother you with all the turmoil, wrangling and ridiculousness that ensued, but after badgering (which is not something I do), them all day (because they didn't know shit, they were avoiding me, failing to return calls when they promised, and generally just plain lying), I learned that they did not in fact have my visa issued but would do everything they could to get it on Monday and then would fly it to me anywhere in the U S of A. I asked for odds that this could happen at all, because obviously it was not worth flying across the country only to be disappointed.

I must say I contained my disappointment and stress remarkably well. Perhaps part of me was a little concerned about being apart from Tex for two solid weeks, especially as we had undergone quite our share, thank you very much, of strain over the preceding months. And there was the unexplainable reluctance in me about the trip. Could it have been fear that my dream would be a disappointment? "Paradise Lost?" as my Indian friend Vwani put it to me upon my return. I do know that once I got the thumbs down from Ambassador on Friday, I took a deep breath and told myself that if the entire mission failed, I really would be okay with it. And I think that was the truth. Maybe I was a little relieved.

Doing the crossword puzzle that evening, a onetime daily habit which had probably not been indulged in at least six months, a clue read, I kid you not, "Missing Bombay."

"Tex, It's a sign."

"It's not a sign," he said.

Return of the Prodigal i-Dotter

I'm so tired I can't tell if that title will make any sense, but I'm too sleepy to care. I have been away, far away, in India. I will be writing about those travels soon, once I've finished Marco Polo's superior tales of those environs, as well as E.M. Forster's classic* novel of lust, class, race and betrayal, so I can cut and paste together something of reasonable literary merit.

A teaser: The most surprising thing about India? The mothballs. I'll explain later.

I've missed you all!

(Actually, this is a lie. I've read all but one of his novels to completion, save, The Longest Journey, which I'd never heard of before today. I love his work. Also, he was a complete tosser.)

Empty Closet

It's no "Lazy Sunday," but I appreciate the LL Cool J tones here.

Steal This Movie

Last night, my band played at LACMA before a screening of the new Sean Penn film, Into the Wild. You need this movie; there won't be a better one this year. It just might be an all-time favorite. Really. I mean it.



Not everyone will feel this way of course. The same stories don't speak in precisely the same tones or at similar amplitudes for all people. I have always been loved the "coming of age" genre, the bildungsroman, which concerns itself with young men taking that journey into manhood. Despite the fact of my femaleness, my old friend, Steven B., would say my attraction here is caused by the thirteen-year-old boy he feels is trapped inside me. My psychologist friend would add that it's an unresolved puer aeternus complex. Same diff.

In any case it's no matter, the film is just great in about every way, but make sure you go in well hydrated.

Superpowers II

This is the best evidence I've seen that we are all going to be just fine. I mean it, click here.

Superpowers

Since the muse has been on vacation (or maybe I wasn't honoring her enough, so she's enacting a trial separation, I'm not certain - I must remind myself to lay some flowers on her doorstep), I must direct you to another, for whom that particular relationship is full on.

This is not the most current entry, rather the 'next to,' but definitely read Mimi Smartypants on things superheroes say. Till next time, I will try to get this chain of kryptonite lifted off my chest, so that I can wield a pen and tap at the keyboard again, for a change.

Then again, there is the current entry, Cautionary Fable, because even if Mimi's humor is, as she claims, "desperate and lame," it's still funnier than television.

All truth passes through 3 stages.

First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

-- Arthur Schopenhauer